


In Defense of Arson

by alekszova



Series: play with fire [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Arson, Child Death, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-11-03 17:08:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 58,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17881826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: Twenty years after running away from his family, Gavin starts a long drive from Alaska to Michigan to kill his father, meeting hitchhiker Connor along the way.





	1. Bonfire

**Author's Note:**

> "Here I am frozen, when I deserve to burn."

**3:08 A.M.**

She’s dead.

She’s dead.

_She’s dead._

_He is going to kill him._

 

**5:57 P.M. | Anchorage, AK / Day One**

His bags are packed. Clothes rolled up tightly and shoved into the bottom of the pack. He doesn’t own a suitcase, and he doesn’t anticipate spending more than a week on this trip. He can do laundry. He can buy new clothes if he really fucking has to.

He just has to get out of here.

Quickly.

Gavin reaches forward, bag slung over his shoulder, his cat in his arm, his hand knocking against the door on the other side of the hall with the metal numbers rusting away. It opens slowly, Tina leaning against the doorframe.

“Here,” he says, holding the cat out to here. “I have to go somewhere.”

“For how long?” she says, taking Latte from him. She curls up against Tina’s shoulder quickly, already purring and happy to be given attention.

“A week. Maybe a week and a half.”

Tina hesitates, watching him, petting the cat as it snuggles closer, peering into the room behind her with eagerness. She’ll say yes. She loves that cat more than she loves him. She’ll say yes. _She has to._ He doesn’t have another option here. He can’t afford to put Latte somewhere else while he’s gone, especially when he doesn’t think he’ll come back.

“Okay,” she says finally. “Where are you going?”

“Michigan.”

“Michigan? Where to in Michigan?”

“Detroit.”

“And how are you getting there?”

“I know you’re a cop and everything, Tina,” he says, taking a step backwards. “But you don’t need to interrogate me.”

“I do. How are you getting there?”

“Driving.”

“That’s a long drive, Gavin.”

“I’m aware.” He’s made the drive before. He has the scars to prove it.

“Don’t pick up any hitchhikers,” she says. “And stop when you’re tired. Stop before you’re tired. And take extra blankets. It’s fucking freezing.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I know. I’m not a child.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him. “Call me every night, okay? And if you need anything—”

“Tina, I’ll be fine.”

She nods, like a worried mother. The big sister he never had. Always on the lookout for him. Bandaging his wounds and cleaning his injuries. She doesn’t ask specifics, not unless she has to. It’s one of the many things he quite likes about her. She’ll interrogate him about _how_ he’s getting to Michigan—but she’s not going to ask _why_ he’s going.

And he’s grateful for that. He’s lied to her before—plenty of times—but he’d like to keep that amount minimal, and it really is quite impossible to tell a cop that he plans on killing his father, and he doesn’t even plan on trying to get away with it. If he they put him in cuffs, if they throw him in jail, so be it.

“Good luck,” she says, and her voice almost breaks on the last word.

Gavin nods and walks away, glancing back only once to find her at the end of the hall, holding Latte and watching him with her eyebrows knitted together in concern.

 

**7:40 P.M. | Alaska Route 1 / Day One**

Connor waits outside of town. Not too far that he can’t turn back and make the trip to a motel if he doesn’t catch a ride, but far enough that the lights are distant and dim, the shape of the buildings hidden by the darkness of the night. He could walk. Get as far as he can manage on foot. But it’s too risky. It’s late. It’s cold. He isn’t going to lose a foot to frostbite in the hopes that he can make it to the next town over.

So, he waits instead.

Sitting on the edge of the road until he sees the brightness of headlights around the bend of the road, half hidden by the dead trees. He stands, holding a hand out, his thumb up, trying his best at a gentle smile. Not overly friendly. Maybe a little sad. People are more willing to pick someone up if they look like they’re down on their luck, right?

He hopes. Maybe he is just being stupid.

The car passes him by, leaves him behind in the dark. He lowers his hand, breathes out a sigh that comes out foggy in the air in front of him. When he was a kid, he liked to pretend he was a dragon. Him and his brother doing their best to breathe out roars. Connor shakes his head, as if it will get rid of the memory. Shove it back as far as he can manage. He pulls the scarf up around his face, pulls the hat down as far as it will go. Too cold for this.

But he has to. He doesn’t have a choice.

He sits down again, pulling his knees up to his chest, hugging them tightly. It would probably be better if he stayed moving. It would make his eyes stay open, too. He’s too tired for this. He hasn’t slept more than a few hours in the last three nights and he’s terrified of falling asleep out in the cold, terrified that he won’t wake up again.

But he’s having a hard time keeping his eyes open. They keep slipping closed and he doesn’t even realize it. It’s so dark out here. He can’t even tell when he blinks. Or maybe he’s imagining his eyes are open to begin with.

 _Shit._ He can do this. He can do this. He can do this.

He repeats that again and again in his head.

_He can do this._

 

**9:36 P.M. | Alaska Route 1 / Day One**

He slows as he passes the guy on the side of the road. It’s too icy out to be going that fast around a curve in the road, with or without some fucking idiot standing out in the cold. But there he is, standing on the side of the road, his hand held out with his thumb up. _Fucking idiot._

Gavin sighs, pulling over to the side, unrolling the passenger window as the guy walks quickly over, Tina’s voice in his ears playing in his head on repeat _don’t pick up any hitchhikers._

But he knows how cold it is outside. He knows how awful other people are. Maybe that should be a reason to leave him on the side of the road. Just because Gavin isn’t a murderer (although, he will be—soon) doesn’t mean that this guy isn’t either.

“Hi,” he says, his voice muffled by a scarf wrapped around his throat.

 _Hi._ God.

“Where are you going?” Gavin asks instead, says it with more venom than he intends but this is some stupid idiot that’s out in the middle of the night in the fucking cold trying to catch rides from strangers so friendliness and niceties hardly matter now.

Fucking. Idiot.

“Kalamazoo.”

“Kalamazoo?”

“It’s in Michigan.”

“I know where the fuck it is,” he says, and then he bites down on his tongue hard enough that he flinches from the pain. “I can take you there.”

The guy hesitates, even after Gavin unlocks the door.

“How do I know you’re not a serial killer?”

“Guess you’re just gonna have to trust me,” Gavin shrugs, not sure if the guy can see it in the dark of the interior of the car, the dark of the night around them. “Or you freeze to death out here.”

The stranger glances over to his left, back to the town that’s a few miles away. Maybe he had planned to go back eventually. But it isn’t really about that. It’s not about the guy having a safe place to go if he didn’t get picked up today. Gavin made this trek once. He knows what kind of creeps are out there. He has more scars than he cares to prove it. If he takes this guy, he could save him a world of pain and suffering.

“Okay,” he nods as he opens the door and sits down, setting an overstuffed backpack on the floor in front of him. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“I’ve never done this before,” he says. “My name is Connor.”

“Gavin,” he replies, and he lets out a small sigh. He should have lied. He should have come up with another name. Something that would protect him, like when he used to be on the street. Going by his brother’s name or his best friend’s. Keeping a wall between them, as flimsy as it may be. And instead he says his own so easily. _Gavin._ He didn’t even tell Tina his real name for a few weeks, and even that was only because he was tired of being called _Eli._ It felt wrong. It reminded him of how terrible his decisions were. How they mounted up so quickly into a weight that felt like it was crushing him.

It still feels like that.

“Put your seatbelt on, Connor,” he says, testing out the name, trying to focus on something else like the way syllables sound on his tongue instead of his past chasing him.

“Right,” he says, and he reaches to his right, pulling the seatbelt into place. He doesn’t start to drive until he hears it click into place.

He glances over at the stranger, at _Connor._ He’s unwinding his scarf, leaving the ends resting lightly around his shoulder. And fuck, maybe it’s dark, but the guy is—

Well—

 _Attractive_.

Gavin can almost hear Tina beside him, hitting him playfully on the shoulder, leaning in close with jokes at the ready about how he should ask him out. He hates it. He hates the loss of her in his life. He wants her back. He wants to hear her laugh.

It hasn’t even been a day and he already feels like a piece of him has disappeared. He’s never going to see her again.

“You said you’ve never done this before. You live in that city, then?”

“No, I took a bus there,” Connor replies, keeping his eyes on the road or the window beside him. Like he’s actively avoiding looking at Gavin right now.

“Why hitchhike then?”

“In a hurry. Buses make too many stops. And…”

“And?”

“I don’t like them,” Connor says, and in the dark he glances at Gavin long enough to offer a small smile. “Too many people, too small of space.”

“Right.”

**10:07 P.M. | Alaska Route 1 / Day One**

Gavin has been lecturing him for half an hour now about hypothermia and frostbite and the dangers of freezing to death. It’s the middle of winter. It’s the middle of the night. It’s the middle of Alaska.

Connor decides to let him talk. It’s almost nice that someone else is worrying about him. Or not even _worry_. Just frustrated and angry that someone could make such a stupid mistake in the middle of _winter_. But he didn’t really have a choice. He hated being on that bus, and not enough of them run through this area to begin with. He’s in a hurry. He has to get out of this state. He has to get to Michigan.

So he lets Gavin rant, and he keeps his smile pressed into his palm. Hidden while Gavin says the same three sentences over and over again. It reminds him of Hank. It reminds him of everything he left behind.

 

**10:33 P.M. | Alaska Route 1 / Day One**

“Where are you going?” Connor asks. “You never said what your destination was.”

“Detroit.”

“Detroit?”

“It’s in Michigan,” Gavin says, and he looks over to Connor and a smile spreads across his face.

“Right. I didn’t… think we’d be going to the same state.”

“Yeah. You from there?”

“No,” he says. “Just visiting family. My brother. I'm visiting my brother.”

“Me too.”

 

**11:27 P.M. | Love’s Travel Stop / Day One**

He watches Connor from the inside of the car, the window beside him rolled down and his hand hanging over the edge with a cigarette leaving ashes against the wet pavement beside him. Connor, adjusting his beanie and flashing a small smile to the cashier ringing up a drink, has been inside the store for ten minutes. _Stretching his legs—_ that’s what he had said. _It’s important, especially when you’re in a car and can’t stretch out the same way._

Gavin doesn’t really care. Connor can take as long as he likes. He doesn’t need a break to stretch his legs he just needs a break from the awkward topics that their conversations seem to land on.

The phone against his ear keeps ringing. On and on and on until the voicemail finally picks up.

“Hey Tina,” he says, and his hand holds onto the phone a little tighter. “I’m still alive. Not out of Alaska yet. Is Latte alright? I’ll call tomorrow. I just…”

He trails off and looks back up to Connor, taking his change and turning away from the counter.

_I know you told me not to pick anyone up, but I did._

_And he’s cute._

_A little bit weird, but cute._

_Not that that changes anything._

Maybe if he was on this trip for a different reason, he could say that. He could make a light-hearted joke about the hitchhiker going to Michigan with him. He could joke that maybe they’d fall in love like some type of movie that thinks love can actually blossom between two people in the span of a few days.

Except he is almost to the Canadian border with money to buy a gun the second he steps foot into Detroit. He is in this car with the mission to rest the nuzzle against his father’s forehead and pull the trigger.

He is not here to fall in love, even if he could believe that it’s a possibility.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

He hangs up, staring at the lock screen of his cat curled up on the couch. So much he is willing to leave behind and give up, but so little, too.

A cat and a girl.

His entire world.

 

**11:55 P.M. | Alaska Route 2 / Day One**

He fidgets. He tries not to, but he can’t help it. Connor is not a fan of the cramped quarters of the car. He stretched out his trip into the gas station as long as he could before he feared that Gavin would leave without him, and now his finger taps against the side of his thigh or his knees, against the door or the edge of the window in a terrible replica of the song playing through the speakers, which he doesn’t even know if he’d be able to recognize on account of the static.

“I think you’re losing the station,” he says, trying to still his fingers. “It’s just static now.”

“It’s the only one out here that isn’t fucking country music or religious preaching.”

Connor bites on his lip, curling his fingers into fists but the repetitive movement seems to now reside in his bones as a need rather than a form of entertainment to focus on.

“You have any music?” he asks. “CDs? Audiobooks?”

“Audiobooks,” Gavin laughs, and then looks towards Connor. “What, are you serious?”

“Right. That’s a no to the music too, then?”

“No, I have some. In the glovebox.”

Connor nods, reaching forward quickly, happy to busy his hands with something other than tapping along to a static-filled beat. He finds the CD case quickly, flipping through it until he sees a band he recognizes and hands the disc to Gavin.

“You don’t… sing, do you?”

“No,” Connor says, replacing the case in the glovebox. “I don’t.”

“Good.”

New music floods the car, quiet and soft and a song that Connor recognizes. He hasn’t listened to it in years, but he can feel his lips already forming every word, mouthing them quietly, hidden by the hand he leans against as he keeps his gaze on the side of the road. Trees and snow and night sky.

 

**12:58 A.M. | Alaska Route 2 / Day Two**

“You look tired.”

“I’m fine.”

“You shouldn’t drive when you’re tired. I can take over, if you like, but I think we should probably stop for the night. Get some rest. Start again in the morning.”

“Fuck off,” he says, looking towards Connor. In the dark, he can’t tell if the concern on his face is real or not. “I’m not tired. You can sleep if you want. I’m not going to stop you.”

“The roads are in poor conditions. You really shouldn’t be driving when you’re—”

“I’m. Not. Tired.”

“It’s a long drive—”

“Connor?”

“Yes?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

He does. For a moment.

Only a moment.

“You aren’t just putting yourself in danger by driving this late. You’re clearly exhausted and you need rest. If you crash, you could hurt someone else on the road.”

“I’ll get some coffee at the next stop.”

He watches out of the corner of his eye as Connor leans forward, turning the music down to a quiet hum, the sound of the car on the road loud and unfiltered.

“You might not care if you get hurt and die, but others do. Stop for the night and get some rest.”

Stopping puts him nearly seven hours off schedule. They add up until it’s days that could be spent in Detroit. He needs to get this done. He needs to get it done _quickly._

But he is tired, and Connor is right.

“Fine. Stay on the lookout for a fucking motel or something, alright?”

“Of course.”

 

**1:39 A.M. | America’s Best Value Inn / Day Two**

They stop at a motel. Connor waited in the car while Gavin checked into a room. They didn’t talk about sharing one—it was something unspoken that they both agreed upon, which, Connor thinks, is a terrible idea if he were in Gavin’s position. He’s a hitchhiker. He could steal from Gavin. Sift through his bags while he sleeps or take his keys and leave. Not that he would, but he _could,_ and he does need the money.

This is a dangerous game that the two of them are playing.

“It’s—” Connor steps into the room, the bag on his shoulder dropping to the floor. “There’s only one bed.”

“Anybody tell you you’re a fucking genius? Observant extraordinaire? You could be the next Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot.”

“I—”

“Sleep on the fucking floor. I paid for the room, I get the bed.”

“I just—”

“I’m not sharing with you,” Gavin says, looking back at him. “So get your little pervy thoughts out of your head, yeah?”

“Alright,” he whispers, but he has to bite his lip to keep from smiling. He isn’t the one that is constantly checking out the other. Does he think Connor stupid? He sees the glances. He saw his entire face and body language shift once he pulled the scarf away from his face.

One of them has “ _pervy thoughts”_ and it isn’t _Connor_.

The smile falls from his face quickly though, as he watches Gavin disappear into the bathroom with his things. He has money—but not enough. Not enough to pay for the gas or the rooms or the food to make Gavin feel as if Connor isn’t taking advantage of him. There is little he can do to repay him.

Connor busies himself with setting up a place to sleep on the floor. Stealing a pillow from the bed and a spare blanket from the closet. He’s slept on the floor enough that it doesn’t bother him. It won’t be comfortable, but he didn’t have much confidence in being comfortable for the next few days either way.

He sheds his coat and leaves his shoes next to the door, sets his bag aside as he sifts through it for a change of clothes, for a tooth brush and other necessities. The door behind him opens and he peaks over the edge of the bed to watch Gavin set his bag down on the armchair.

“You spying on me?”

“No,” Connor says, pushing up to his feet. “I just…”

“What?”

Gavin sits down on the bed, pulling his phone from his pocket and swiping across the screen.

“I just… wanted to say thank you,” he whispers, leaning against the bed. “For helping me.”

“Yeah? I expect a million dollars deposited into my bank account by the end of the week.”

Connor smiles, lets a small laugh out that is neither real nor convincing. It doesn’t gain Gavin’s attention, but the shifting of the weight on the bed does. It pulls his gaze from the screen to Connor as he moves across the small space.

“What are you doing?”

His heart beats in his chest so fast he is afraid his ribs are going to crack under the pressure of it. His body trembles as he moves closer, his hands shake as he straddles Gavin’s lap.

There is one thing he can give Gavin that will chip away at himself but will preserve the money tucked away in his bag. There is one thing he can offer that might be enough to please someone for going out on a limb like this for a stranger. Something he can give again and again in exchange for the ride.

“I want to repay you,” he says quietly.

Gavin looks up at him. He leans forward, just slightly. His hands touch Connor’s waist for a millisecond before they disappear again.

“You don’t want to do this,” he says, and his voice is painfully quiet. “And you shouldn’t say you do.”

“I—”

“Don’t do this to yourself.”

“I don’t have anything else to give you.”

“No? It doesn’t matter. I don’t want it.”

But he does, and Connor can tell that from the way he’s looking at him right now. The tone of his voice and the way his hands keep moving like they want to touch him. The way he leaned forward as though he was going to kiss him.

“Are you sure?”

Gavin laughs and he looks away, “Yes, I’m fucking sure. I don’t want you and I don’t want _this_.”

And then he is holding onto him, a tight grip against his waist as he pushes Connor to the side, pinning him down against the bed.

“Don’t fucking offer it. Not when you don’t want it. Not to anyone. Someone will take it and you will regret it for the rest of your life and you will _hate_ yourself for it.”

Connor thinks, maybe, he should be scared. His body is still shaking, he is pressed against the mattress and he has nowhere to go. He should be scared. But he isn’t. Gavin is angry and his words are harsh but he isn’t _intimidating_. Maybe because Connor isn’t a fool, and he knows how much more there are to Gavin’s words with the violent way he says them.

“Okay,” Connor whispers. “I won’t.”

Gavin nods and the hands on him disappear as he sits up. Connor stays there, laying against the bed, staring at the ceiling, willing his heart to return to a normal beat, willing his hands and body to still.

“I’m going to sleep on the floor,” he says. “You can have the bed.”

He doesn’t move. He can’t get his mouth to argue against it. A weight vanishes from the bed, the light turns off. He listens to the sound of Gavin laying down on the floor and he stays exactly where he is and he tries not to think of what he might be feeling right now if Gavin hadn’t shoved him away.

Shame?

Disgust?

Regret?

All of the above?


	2. Light

**1:59 A.M. | America’s Best Value Inn / Day Two**

He had a boyfriend. Once. Only once. This is what he thinks of as he lays in the dark, trying to push all the feelings in his head and his chest down into something he can manage. Push his thoughts away onto something else so he doesn’t make the wounded animal noise that wants to tumble from his lips.

Connor had a boyfriend.

 _Once_.

He always wanted more. More than just kissing and sex but to feel like he could love this person forever and it would be returned. That he could be loved in a way that meant marriage and children and vacations. That any arguments they had wouldn’t break them because they were stronger than that.

He didn’t get it. He never got it.

He watched his boyfriend fall in love with someone else. A pretty boy with a kind smile. _Simon_. He was the kind of boy that Markus wanted. The kind that wouldn’t need to push past boundaries because they’d fall away easily. The kind that wouldn’t watch his boyfriend leave the room and spend the night curled up into himself on the verge of tears.

Simon would never have to worry about his boyfriend loving someone else. He wouldn’t have to worry if Markus left the bed that he was falling into someone else’s, because Markus would never leave him.

Connor was never cheated on. Not by Markus. But it _felt_ like it.

He didn’t fight when Markus left, but he couldn’t bring himself to end it. He should have, but he was terrified. Terrified of being alone and terrified that he was making this up and terrified of—

Markus fighting for him.

He was terrified of Markus telling Connor he was wrong and begging him not to break up because he would give in. He would have said _okay, okay, okay, let’s stay together._ And then if they had? If they had stayed together after all of that? He would still feel that same rotting emptiness in his chest. Eating through his organs, making him feel like he was falling apart. Tears always stuck in his eyes, a wounded animal noise caught in his throat.

It is strange knowing even now and knowing then that there was nothing more he wanted than for Markus to fight for him and convince him to stay. For someone to want him as much as he wanted them. For them to still be thinking about Connor to this day as the one that got away.

It is strange when he heard the words _I’m sorry, Connor, but I love someone else,_ he didn’t fight at all. It was a long time coming. Disappearances and glances and laughter from another side of the room. He wanted Markus to fight for him but he knew no matter what, no matter how hard he fought for Markus, that it wouldn’t be enough. He was never enough. He never quite made Markus laugh the same way Simon did. He never got those glances that held love instead of lust. Even if they tried to be more than just fuck buddies, the two of them always resided in a permanent state of it. Gentle touches and careful kisses and calling each other _boyfriend_ didn’t mean that they acted like anything other than booty calls for the other.

Or, at least, that was all that Connor amounted to for Markus.

He’s angry. The rage fills him in moments like this. Floods through him unobstructed and unstoppable for a minute. Only a minute. White-hot. Furious. Teeth clenched together, fist curled up tight, ready to break something.

And then it falls away and leaves nothing behind but a shell. A rotting empty shell.

Of all the girlfriends he’s had, of the couple that had cheated on him, of the ones that left him behind for a variety of reasons, none of them have hurt him quite like Markus did.

Maybe he thought the first time he was with a guy, the first time he managed to allow himself to admit to feeling something for a boy, that it would be his soul mate. They could click together and never break apart. It would be all happiness with no arguments and no messes and just—

_Perfect._

It’s been six years. The wound is still gaping and raw. He doesn’t know how to close it. He searches and searches and searches. Frantic hands trying to stop his heart from beating so fast, trying to smooth out from their urge to punch or throw something. Eyes kept squeezed shut tight to do its insignificant battle against the tears.

He doesn’t love Markus. Not anymore.

But he did.

Connor sits up, looks over in the dark of the room towards the shape on the floor. _Gavin._ Curled up tight in a little ball, blanket pulled around his shoulders. The light of the moon slants through the blinds in the window, casting a soft blue glow across him in diagonal stripes.

_Don’t offer it._

_Not when you don’t want it._

_Because someone will take it._

He wants to tell Gavin he’s sorry, but he knows the weight of those words. They don’t fix anything. They don’t solve anything. They don’t ease any bit of the pain.

But the absence of them in a time like this, with that empty, rotting feeling—

It inflicts a strange type of damage.

“Gavin?” he whispers.

There isn’t a response, but the body seems to still, no subtle rise and fall of breathing.

He knows if Gavin was his friend, if they knew each other even a fraction of a bit better, he would climb off the bed, crawl to his side, gather him in his arms. Hold Gavin so tightly that the fear of breaking was diminished because it would be so impossible to fall apart by the crushing embrace of arms around him.

But they aren’t friends.

And Connor can’t do that.

“I’m sorry.”

His voice is tiny and broken, cracking on every syllable it can.

 

**8:57 A.M. | America’s Best Value Inn / Day Two**

He had a boyfriend. Once. Only once. This is what he thinks of as he lays in the dark, trying to push all the feelings in his head and his chest down into something he can manage. Push his thoughts away onto something else so that he doesn’t start screaming or crying like he usually does.

Gavin had a boyfriend.

 _Once_.

He never wanted more. He didn’t want hand holding and love and the promise of a future. Kids and marriage? House hunting? Vacations? He never wanted that. He wasn’t built for it. Too broken and bruised and damaged from his life to offer anything more than a terrible husband and a worse father. He wasn’t built for it.

Except that’s a _lie_.

He _always_ wanted more. He wanted to look at houses with the love of his life and he wanted to go ring shopping and have to find hiding places for it until he summoned the courage to ask. He wanted to argue about caterers and flower arrangements and which colors to wear. If there should be a theme or just whatever they can afford and hope that it doesn’t clash. He wanted a future.

He planned it out in his head. Only a few months of a serious relationship but he was so consumed by the happiness he was feeling that he thought about the little things. Day dreaming about the perfect house or a cramped apartment. How he could propose, what words he would use.

And then his boyfriend came home one day and Gavin was smiling and ready to pull him into a kiss before he saw his face.

Blank and expressionless.

_I think we should take a break._

He didn’t argue it. He didn’t fight it. He didn’t think he should. He wasn’t going to push him. He never wanted to push him. He didn’t want his own walls broken down, why would he ever break someone else’s?

Gavin watched him pack his bags and leave and he was left all alone in this small apartment and—

And it was such a _shock_ he didn’t even feel anything. He didn’t cry. He wasn’t upset. A break meant that his boyfriend was still trying to salvage things. He’d come back. The distance and separation would remind him of why they’re together.

_Wouldn’t it?_

He didn’t tell anyone.

He let the days go on. He let himself survive in the emptiness of the apartment by himself. He figured out a way around it. He continued life as normal. Gavin didn’t want to go on a break. He wanted his boyfriend back every second of every day. He wanted him in the bed beside him. But he wasn’t mourning the loss of a future or the loss of a boyfriend. They were on a break.

Whatever a _break_ meant. Did it mean that he was out there sleeping with other people? Going on dates? Acting as though they were truly broken up even though technically, technically they were still together? What did a break entail?

He’d never been on one. He never had a boyfriend before. He slept with random men at clubs but he’d never really had someone he could call his _boyfriend._

And to Gavin—

To Gavin it meant a break from each other. Not broken up. They were still together. He still had a boyfriend. They were still an _item,_ a _pair,_ a _couple._

 _Come back,_ he texted to him in the middle of the night, in the middle of watching a movie. _I want you back._

And he waited.

Because a month had slipped by while he was trying to give him the space he wanted. A month fell through his fingers until he couldn’t stand being alone anymore. Thoughts rattling through his head and unravel. Too much space, too much time. Lost.

 _I’m sorry,_ his text was returned, _I don’t love you anymore._

It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. His stomach dropped, his hands trembled as he set the phone down, as he got up and tried to walk somewhere—anywhere. He couldn’t be here. He needed to be somewhere else. Even in a different room. The bathroom or the bedroom instead of the living room, which was now tainted with those words.

_I don’t love you anymore._

But his legs couldn’t hold his weight and he fell to the floor and he could feel the screams in his chest smothered against the carpet. All of the times people had used him and tossed him aside like it was nothing and he built a wall out of those memories. All these bricks made of all these reasons.

Physical abuse from his father’s hand to the left.

Sexual abuse he brought upon himself to the right.

A ceiling crafted from burn marks on his arms and teeth closed over his hand.

Unanswered questions on the floor. A sea of them swallowing him whole. Did he ever love Gavin? _Could_ anyone?

He saw him again less than a week later. Arm wrapped around the waist of another guy, leaning up and pressing a kiss against his lips. Smiling and laughing while Gavin had a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes in a plastic bag from the store down the block.

In the cold air of the motel room, stale and chemical scented at the same time, filling his lungs and freezing his body until it wanted to tremble with shivers, he watches Connor get ready to leave for breakfast. The door to the bathroom left ajar as he brushes his teeth. He wants to get up and close it. He wants to stop the light from blinding him and more importantly he wants Connor _gone._

He looks like him. In the vaguest way possible. He looks like Gavin’s ex. The guy that slipped into his life and offered him the dream that maybe he could have more. The house and the wedding and the kids. Happiness. Stability. He was too stupid to think of anything more than how lucky he was to get this chance.

And then he was scooped out. A clean cut that excised his heart like it was a tumor and he was left wanting nothing more than the ability to have it back. His chest is hollow and empty and yet it still wants—

_More._

He is filled to the brim with ghosts.

 

**9:15 A.M. | Sally’s Diner / Day Two**

They sit opposite of each other in a diner down the street from the hotel. He watches Connor look through the menu carefully, although he settles on something as simple as pancakes in the end. They shouldn’t be wasting time here. It’s precious minutes he could use to get one step closer to his father. Raise a gun to his head and fire it. One step closer to shutting his life down for good. Metal bars keeping him from ever getting back to Tina, to Latte.

A girl and a cat.

He can talk to her when he’s in prison. He can have her bring him pictures of the cat. It’ll be fine. He can survive off of that.

His father deserves to die more than he deserves to have a happy life.

“Gavin—”

“Don’t,” he says, because he knows the way Connor is saying his name right now, the way it softens and his head tilts to the side, the way his entire body seems like it’s poised for the worst to happen—

He doesn’t want that.

He can’t spill these secrets. Not again.

And it’s been twenty years.

He’s fine.

He’s fine.

He’s fine.

“Okay.”

He looks up to him, watches Connor’s gaze drift from his face to the cup of coffee sitting in front of him, filled up for the second time, trying its hardest to ease the buzzing in the back of his head that tells him needs to sleep some more, to lure him back into those nightmares again.

It’s been a while. A few months since he had one. A haunting of hands and lips. It always comes back when he sees someone he likes, when he thinks he can steal a little bit more than just glances.

_He’s fine._

“I know you don’t know me…” Connor says, trailing off, and its like a stab wound, those words. A knife sliding into his chest, cutting a neat line from heart to stomach. Split him open. Find that nothing lies inside. Except ghosts. “And I’m sorry… about last night. I shouldn’t have done that. And I’m…”

So many pauses and so many silences and Gavin can’t open his mouth and tell him to shut up no matter how much he wants to.

Connor isn’t going to say the words out loud. He’s not going to say them to Gavin’s face. He isn’t going to reveal that he understood what Gavin meant. He didn’t hide them well. He should have phrased things better. Made it so Connor wouldn’t realize how many times he sold his body in exchange for something.

He’s fine.

He’s fine.

He’s fine.

Twenty years of accepting what happened to him. Or, maybe not accepting, but the length of time is enough to convince himself he doesn’t have a right to be upset by it anymore. He’s put an expiration date on his trauma.

_He’s fine._

“Do you want syrup?” he asks, reaching for the bottle beside him and handing it to Connor.

Connor says nothing, but the worry in his face seems to deepen and Gavin realizes he’s inadvertently admitted something here. He should have laughed, he should have smiled, he should have made a joke. Last night—

Last night he shouldn’t have shoved Connor away, he should’ve just smirked and said _no thanks_ and not made it such a serious offense. And now, he should have saved himself. He should have barked out a laugh and told him it wasn’t that big of a deal. That everything is fine. He should have joked about leaving Connor behind.

But he didn’t.

And now Connor knows more than Gavin wants him to without him even having to say a word.

 

**11:28 A.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Two**

It snows, heavily. It’s difficult to see the road. A blur of white on the asphalt and gray skies above them, windshield wipers trying their best to keep up with the blizzard. They aren’t going to get very far tonight.

The music, though—

The music feels like summer.

It reminds him of days spent running outside with his brother barefoot, skin left dirty and clothes left grass stained. Bruises and scrapes and laughter filling the air. It reminds him of the too hot sun and the sunburns left on his skin. It reminds him of the all the fake games they used to play with sticks for swords and rocks for grenades.

It doesn’t remind him of the bad. It gives him a sense of nostalgia that he hasn’t felt in a long, long time. It gives him a sense of nostalgia that he didn’t even know he could feel again.

 

**1:04 P.M. | America’s Best Value Inn / Day Two**

“You said you were visiting your brother, right?”

“What?” Gavin says it too quickly, shock hitting him hard like he’s been slapped across the face.

“Yesterday, I said I was visiting my brother and you said you were, too.”

“Oh,” he breathes out a sigh. “I—Yeah. Sorry. I am.”

_Sorry._

He is not the type to apologize, but it slips from his lips before he can stop it. It’s like he’s been pushed. Shoved backwards by the subject of family and he’s in that house again with his head pressed under the water in the bathtub and he’s saying that word over and over again.

_Sorry. Sorry. Sorry._

_sorrysorrysorryimsosorrypleaseforgivemeimsososososorry._

“We don’t have—”

“His name is Eli,” Gavin says, repeating the words he told Tina. The little information she knows passed on once more to this stranger. “He’s a jerk but…”

“But he’s your brother,” Connor replies, and when Gavin glances over to him there’s a small smile on his lips. “Mine too.”

“You get along with him?”

“Mostly. Do you get along with your brother?”

_No. Not at all._

Gavin’s grip on the steering wheel tightens.

“Yeah,” he says, hoping that his voice doesn’t betray him. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“No? What happened?”

_A house burned down._

“I moved to Alaska.”

“How long has it been?”

_Twenty years._

Eli wouldn’t even recognize him now.

“Few years. It’s a long drive and I don’t like planes.”

“Me neither,” Connor says. “Too—”

“Too many people,” he says, echoing Connor’s words from the day before. “Too small of a space.”

“Yes. I don’t like heights, either. I feel like I’m… like I don’t have control of my body.”

 

**3:41 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Two**

“Okay. I’ve thought of something.”

“Is it alive?”

“No.”

“How big is it?”

“Yes or no questions only, Gavin.”

“Okay. Fine. Is it bigger than a cat? Like a house cat?”

“Yes.”

“Can you hold it?”

“No.”

“Is it… Fuck. I hate this game. I can’t come up with good questions.”

“Just try.”

“Thanks for the pep talk.”

“We don’t have to play.”

“I’m not a fucking quitter.”

“Of course not.”

“Is it naturally made?”

“Yes.”

“Can you hold it?”

“You already asked that once and the answer is no.”

“Right. Shit. How big is it?”

“Yes or no—”

“Is it bigger than a fucking country?”

“Yes.”

“Wh—What?”

“It’s larger than a country.”

“Is it _a_ country?”

“No.”

“Is it the ocean?”

“No.”

“Is it in the sky?”

“Yes.”

“Is it Neptune? Pluto? Jupiter?”

“No.”

“Should I list off the other planets?”

“No.”

“Okay. Is it an asteroid then?”

“Are asteroids bigger than countries?”

“Fuck if I know. I’m not a science bitch. Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not.”

“Whatever. Is it a star?”

“Yes.”

“You chose a fucking star?”

“Technically the sun. Do you want to go next?”

“Fuck no.”

 

**5:10 P.M. | Petro-Canada / Day Two**

He watches Gavin.

He doesn’t mean to. He feels like a babysitter like this. Keeping an eye on his every move, worry constant in the back of his head for a stranger. But he can’t help it. He worries. He always worries far more than he should. Ever since he was a child it was always the worst thing that might have happened if someone was late or angry or upset.

He worries.

It’s why he’s here in the first place, in a stranger’s car in the middle of Canada.

“You ready?”

Connor hesitates, not quite ready to get back in the close quarters of the car just yet. It’s better than the bus. Less people. More control over when they stop.

“I—I was hoping we could stop somewhere. Here, in the city.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s a history museum,” he says, stepping away from Gavin towards the brochures sitting on one of the counters, picking one up to hold out to him. “I’d like to go.”

“To a… history museum?”

“Yes.”

His heart is beating a little too fast in his chest and he yearns for it to slow down.

_Please say yes. Please say yes. Please say—_

“Is it even open?”

“If it is, can we go?”

“You sound like a fucking eight-year-old,” Gavin replies, but he’s smiling. “You’re really that much of a nerd?”

“Stop calling me a nerd,” he replies. “People aren’t nerds just because you’re an idiot.”

Gavin laughs, but he opens up the brochure anyways, looking at the different pages and the array of pictures depicting the various parts of the museum before his face falls. “It closed at five.”

“Oh—” he bites his lip. “Can we—”

“Break in?”

The way he says it sounds so serious and so tempting. Breaking into a closed museum and looking at all the exhibits in the dark without other people to bother them. Not worrying about taking up space or being in other people’s way.

Very tempting.

“I was going to ask if we could go tomorrow.”

“Excuse me?”

“You didn’t sleep much last night. Neither did I. We could get dinner, stop for the night, go to the museum in the morning—”

“This whole trip to Detroit is nearly seventy hours without stops, Connor. The roads are fucking terrible. We can’t lose seven hours of driving unless you want to be stuck in a car with me for an entire week.”

“Gavin—”

“There will be other museums.”

“I know. You’re right. Let’s go.”

 

**5:23 P.M. | Whitehorse, YT, Canada / Day Two**

A girl and a cat.

A girl and a cat.

A girl and a cat.

It’s all he has.

Maybe he just wants to have it for a little bit longer.

 

**5:23 P.M. | Whitehorse, YT, Canada / Day Two**

Gavin is a few miles out of the city when he turns around. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t seem to react to it at all. He just turns around.

Connor smiles and he wonders—

Wonders why Gavin is helping him, why he cares.

It’s a long drive.

This is wasted time for Gavin.

And Connor can’t do a single thing to repay him.


	3. Ablaze

**6:46 P.M. | Tokyo Sushi / Day Two**

Connor is staring at him. Has been for a while now, barely even paying attention to his own food, like Gavin’s face is more interesting than the fact they haven’t eaten since noon.

“What?” he asks, and the word doesn’t come out as a question, it’s snapped harsh and angry and for some reason, it makes Connor smile, and that smile pisses him off.

“Thank you.”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m being serious, Gavin. You didn’t have to come back.”

“Just leave it, alright?”

He doesn’t like being thanked. It feels strange and wrong. Gavin knows exactly who he is. He’s not a kind person. He doesn’t have a genuine bone in his body. The only person he’s ever believed truly cared about him was—

Tina.

He misses her. More than anything in the world. He wants to be back in his shitty apartment, flipping through channels and wasting time before he has to eventual turn in for the night. Living boring day after boring day. It sounds so pleasant, so peaceful. Eventually everything inside of him would settle down into something manageable. Now it won’t. Now it never will.

“Gavin?”

He looks up to Connor, not trusting himself to speak this time. He knows whatever he says will be angry and vile and he bites his tongue instead, lets his face twist into annoyance and do the work for him. He can never quite decide if he wants to shove Connor away or if he’s grateful to have him at his side.

The boy is strange. This situation is strange.

“I really do mean it. You didn’t have to do this for me. Thank you.”

“It’s fine.”

Connor smiles and leans against his hand, “You don’t hear those words very often, do you?”

He sighs and turns back to his food, pushing it around his plate, thinking about how he’ll have to call Tina and lie about where he is or why he’s not as far as he should be or what is happening right now.

 

**7:23 P.M. | Tokyo Sushi / Day Two**

“Hey, Tina.”

“Hey yourself, dickhead. You were supposed to call an hour ago.”

“I just—” he looks down at the cigarette between his fingers and sighs. “Busy is all. I don’t like being on the phone when I’m driving, alright? This is the first time I’ve got a chance to stop.”

“Yeah? Where are you?”

He turns to look at the building behind him, through the window where Connor is cleaning off the last remnants of his plate and readying to leave.

“Getting dinner.”

“Gav. _Where_ are you?”

“Canada.”

Tina sighs, and he can almost picture her frustration right now. Jaw clenched, arms folded, eyes boring into him. But he can also see it disappear. The way she folds it carefully smaller and smaller until it is buried deep in the back of her head.

She won’t push on the subject. She never has. She never will.

Sometimes he wonders if that’s the only reason they’re friends. She lets some of his shit stay hidden no matter how terrible the situation is. He’s bled out on her floor before, screamed into a pillow as she threaded a needle through his skin. There’s a hideous curved scar on his chest from it, always reminding him that she’s saved his life in more ways than one.

“And how is everything?” she asks. “You’re not living off of coffee, are you?”

“No. I told you, I stopped for dinner.”

“What’d you get?”

“Sushi.”

She laughs, “Okay. Fine. At least it’s something other than coffee and cigarettes.”

They have this conversation frequently. Nearly every single time one of them is spending too much time awake and not enough time sleeping. Poking at each other to check if they’re alive, if they’re stable.

He worries about her. She worries about him.

And Gavin knows right now, he’s meant to reply with a joke. To force out a _you’re not my mom_ so the two of them can laugh it off and know it’s nothing serious. But he’s watching Connor through the window and he knows in less than a week he’ll be at the house he grew up in and his father will be dead and he can’t possibly joke about this right now. It’s so difficult to get words out. It’s a fight to form a single syllable with Tina. She knows him too well. She knows when he’s faking it.

“I have to go. I… I don’t want to lose too much time. I still have a lot of driving to do.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

He waits in the silence for a moment, listening to her shuffling through papers, listening to the background noise of the police department. Phone calls that are much more important than this once. Cases needing to be solved. Criminals needing to be caught.

But he doesn’t want to hang up.

Not yet.

“How are you, Tina?” he asks, half realizing how selfish he’s been by not asking this already.

“Tired,” she replies immediately. “But I’m good. Everything is all good.”

“Even Latte?”

“Latte’s great. She loves my apartment. If you don’t come back soon, you’ll never get her away from me.”

He bites his lip, watches Connor walk over to the door and step outside. Gavin turns away from him, fishing the keys out of his pocket to unlock the car for him. Anything to busy himself, to try and not focus on Tina’s words.

“Gavin? Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” he replies, his voice hoarse and raw like he’s been screaming. “I’m still here.”

“Can you…” she trails off, lets out a tiny sigh. “Come back, okay Gav?”

“I will,” he replies immediately. “I’ll call you when I stop for the night, Tina. I’ve got to go.”

“Okay. Drive saf—”

He hangs up, pocketing his phone and leaning back against the building.

_Come back._

Not _come back soon._

Not _hurry back._

Just

come

back.

 

**9:02 P.M. | Canada’s Best Value Inn / Day Two**

“Only one bed again?”

“Get your own damn room if you want your own fucking bed.”

“Point taken.”

 

**3:54 A.M. | Canada’s Best Value Inn / Day Three**

He can’t breathe.

There’s smoke in his lungs, filling them up. Filling him up. Turning him into a monster that’s not quite solid. Skin to ash. Ash to dust. Dust to nothing. His hand is on his throat, clawing at it as though his nails will break through and get him the oxygen he needs. His heart is beating so fast in his chest he’s afraid that it will stop working, and he can’t get it to slow down. And there’s blood. Thick scent in the air, mingling with the smoke. He didn’t notice it before, but now it’s impossible to not pay attention to. How strong it is. In his nose and on his tongue.

And there is fire _everywhere_.

 

**3:55 A.M. | Canada’s Best Value Inn / Day Three**

“Gavin?”

There are hands on his body.

On his chest, on his neck.

They burn like flames and he sits up so quickly his head connects with the other persons hard enough to leave stars in his vision. Pretty dancing lights, vision swimming in the dark as he tries to see the face lying on the other side, his hands coming up and grasping and pushing and pulling at the ones on him, not sure what to do with them.

“Gavin, you—”

“Fucking let go of me—”

“I did. I did.”

He breathes in a ragged breath, his eyes adjusting to the dark, shapes turning into something solid and real. A body by the side of his bed, kneeling on the floor.

_The floor._

It takes him a moment to piece it all together again. What time is it? How many hours has it been? How much sleep did he get?

“Gavin?”

_Gavin._

A grounding.

“Connor,” he repeats back.

“Yeah,” whispered, so quietly. _Yes, it’s me._ As if they’re friends. As if they know each other.

He remembers, though. Fourth time the charm. Clicking it all back in place.

They arrived at the hotel. They joked about the bed again. That they should be sleeping in separate rooms, but both too tight on money for it. It was unspoken. Not a necessity. It was just how it would work. It was just how it would be.

It’s how it was when he came here. It didn’t even seem the slightest bit weird to him that a stranger was coming to his hotel room with him. How many times had he done it? Following creepy old men to their rooms to thank them for the two hours, the hundred miles, the uncomfortable conversations—

Gavin shoves them away, tries to focus on the night before. Watching Connor sink down into the chair behind the desk, sitting close to the window with a book in his hands but his gaze stuck on watching the snow fall outside. So close to the river. A soft smile on his face, like he was thinking about winter activities that didn’t include being stuck in a car with a stranger.

It’s past Christmas. It’s past New Years. It’s past the holidays that people are on the road for. No presents and no hot chocolate waiting for them with the open arms of loved ones when they arrive where they’re going.

For Gavin, it is a bullet and then handcuffs.

He has no idea what awaits Connor.

But he remembers falling asleep, watching the window, waiting as time ticked by, hoping and willing himself to finally fall asleep so he didn’t have to resort to drinking so much coffee his fingers would be trembling with the caffeine. But also, quietly, hoping he doesn’t sleep enough for the nightmares to settle back around him. Claws digging deep, dredging up old wounds he thought he was done with.

He remembers listening to Connor’s breathing shift from awake to the deep breaths of slumber. He remembers moving to the other side of the bed, peering over the edge at where he slept, eyes closed, blanket drawn up around him.

And now, here, his hands tight around Connor’s wrists. Gavin lets go of them slowly and they fall to Connor’s side again in slow movements, like Gavin’s an animal Connor is afraid to scare away. His fingers are trembling, and he wants to curl them into fists, to stop them, to force that need back into his bones where it will rest like a vibration that will feel like it’s eating away at his insides.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t want Connor to see his hands turned into weapons like that.

Especially since he’s not even sure if Connor ever touched him to begin with.

“I’m—”

“It’s okay,” Connor says quickly. “You were having a nightmare, weren’t you? Are you alright?”

_No._

Gavin doesn’t want to answer the question. He refuses to. He doesn’t want to lie because he is _tired_ of lying. He is lying so much to Tina that he feels as if one day it will all spill out of him in some disgusting mess. Slit his belly open and leave the garbage to bleed out on the floor.

“Did I wake you?”

“Y-Yes. You were crying. Are you alright?”

_Crying?_

He doesn’t cry.

He doesn’t.

He—

“Gavin, are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“You—”

“I said I’m fucking fine,” he lets out a sigh, heavy and annoyed. “Just leave me alone, okay? You don’t—You don’t know me, alright? So just leave me the fuck alone.”

Connor nods in the dark, but he stays there for a moment, watching Gavin watching him. The two of them engaged in a staring contest to see who can break away first. And Gavin wants to. He wants to turn over, keep his back to Connor, shut him out, push him away. It is what he’s best at.

But for some reason he can’t.

He’s caught here, watching him.

Until, finally, Connor slinks back down to the floor.

 

**9:32 A.M. | Canada’s Best Value Inn / Day Three**

“They have breakfast here?”

“Only in the summer,” Connor replies. “Sorry. We can go to a diner? Someplace close by?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“There’s a café not too far from here. They probably have better coffee than the gas stations. Do you want to go there?”

Gavin looks at him.

 _Finally_.

He offers him a small smile, a little nod of his head. “Yeah. Let’s go to the café.”

And like that—

So simple—

They pretend nothing happened.

 

**11:23 A.M. | Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre / Day Three**

They wait in the parking lot, for lack of anything else to do. Connor had listed off a dozen things in the city that they could do before Gavin stopped him. All of them cost money he doesn’t have and can’t risk spending. So, they wait. Here. In this stupid fucking parking lot.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says. “I didn’t realize—”

“It’s fine.”

“You’re going to visit your brother. Don’t you want to spend as much time with him as you can?”

Gavin laughs, but it’s cut short when he sees the look on Connor’s face and he readies himself with as many lies and half truths as he can manage. “Listen, we don’t really get along all that great. I’m visiting him because I have to, not because I want to.”

“You—”

“It’s fine. I didn’t come back here to listen to you apologize every five seconds, alright? Just drop it.”

“Okay.”

They sit in silence for a little longer. Connor lining up coins on the dashboard. Counting out American and Canadian money that Gavin can tell without look adds up to little over two dollars each. He tries to find something to busy himself with on his phone. Something that would make it look like he isn’t just sitting here watching the snow fall and waiting for doors to open to a museum he couldn’t care less about exploring.

But he doesn’t want to kill his battery, and he doesn’t have any friends beside Tina, who has only sent a singular picture of Latte in her window, excited about a different part of the street to look at.

“Gavin?”

“If you apologize again, I’m going to kick your ass.”

“Okay. Never mind.”

**12:14 P.M. | Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre / Day Three**

Gavin sticks to Connor’s side because—

Well, he doesn’t know _why_ exactly. He just doesn’t really want to be wandering through a museum by himself. Looking at a bunch of bones? Reading a bunch of facts and information about animals that have long been extinct? It’s boring. It’s stupid. It’s useless.

But he keeps by Connor’s side, careful not to bump into him. Careful to pretend he’s reading the signs. Careful to act as though he’s just as interested in the exhibits as Connor is.

**1:57 P.M. | Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre / Day Three**

He’s a terrible actor. Connor keeps testing him, seeing how far he’ll play at being interested in any of this. Trick questions about exhibits they aren’t standing in front of, false facts to see if he catches on. He doesn’t. He looks bored out of his mind.

But it’s nice not having to be by himself, even if he never came here to look at any of this to begin with.

“You really like this kind of stuff?” Gavin asks.

Connor smiles and tilts his head, rereading one of the plaques again. He does. He likes history. He likes knowledge. He is a consumer of everything he can get his hands on. There are books taking up precious space in his backpack so he can read about the universe and space when he has little else to do. A pretty hardcover with shiny silver edges to the pages. That one is his favorite.

“Are you going to call me a nerd again?”

“No.”

Connor glances over to him, watches him try to bite back a smile. A bad liar, too.

“You were,” he says, turning towards him.

“No,” he repeats. “I was gonna call you a fucking dork.”

“Much better.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Your insults, while extremely weak, are very amusing.”

Gavin smiles, as if he’s won something before Connor’s words sink in. And in that split second, in that tiny precipice before he actually understands what Connor has said, something in his chest _catches, strikes, combusts._

He doesn’t know how to explain it. He’s not equipped with the proper terminology to describe it. But he knows what it means. He knows _exactly_ what it means.

“Hey—”

Connor takes a step towards him, which seems to silence Gavin in an instant.

“Did you consider,” he says, looking past him to the other people in the room. “That many people here likely think we’re on a date right now?”

“Wh-Where’s this coming from?”

He. Doesn’t. Know.

And he’d like for it to go away.

Gavin is a stranger. A handsome one, but still a _stranger_ , and not even that nice of one. Bare minimum kindness. Vulgar. A mouth that can never seem to go more than two seconds without spitting out some type of profanity.

“Just an observation,” he says, shrugging. “That’s all.”

“What? You want to give them a show or something?”

“With you? No.”

Gavin scoffs, “Yeah right. That why you hit on me the first night?”

“I wasn’t hitting on you,” he says, watching Gavin’s expression closely. The blankness, the forced smile that looks like an after thought.

He’s trying to make light of this again, and Connor will let him, but he knows there’s more. Information he isn’t allowed to have because he doesn’t know Gavin well enough. Connor can’t blame him. It isn’t as if he’s spilling all of his secrets out for Gavin to take ownership of either.

“Gavin?” he says, taking another step toward him. He stays still, leaning against the exhibit even though there are signs forbidding it. But he doesn’t move. He doesn’t retreat when Connor gets closer again, and there’s the same feeling in his chest when Gavin looks up and meets Connor’s eyes.

He is in terrible, terrible trouble.

“What?”

He wants to touch him. He wants to reach out with his hands and grasp the fabric of his jacket. He wants to caress the side of his face. He wants to pull him close and let him know how badly he feels for the things he’s had to suffer through, even if Gavin has never said those words out loud.

But he doesn’t.

Instead Connor leans forward, placing a soft kiss against Gavin’s forehead.

“Thank you for bringing me here.”

He’s said it a dozen times, and it has always been shot down with an annoyed glance. As if Gavin doesn’t want to be reminded of the rare nice things he’s actually done, especially for a stranger. But this time, when Connor pulls away and takes a step backwards, Gavin is smiling. It’s faint, barely even there, but still.

There.

A smile.

 

**2:41 P.M. | Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre / Day Three**

They drift apart, going their separate ways. Gavin looks over to find Connor talking to employees, looking at different exhibits that the two of them have already looked at together. He can’t seem to keep his eyes off of him. They keep gliding over to Connor, sticking to his back like he’s afraid he’s going to lose him here.

Which, Gavin tries to remind himself, shouldn’t even fucking matter. He doesn’t know Connor. He’s just a stranger. If he gets left at a god damn museum, it’s his own fucking fault for wanting to come here to begin with. It’s the best possible place to lose him at.

_Lose._

Not _ditch,_ just _lose._

He can’t actively leave Connor behind. He might be a shitty person, but there’s an unofficial contract between them. Gavin is taking him to Michigan, where they will part their ways and never see each other again.

He’s fine with that.

It’s what he wants the most, to never see Connor’s face every again.

Gavin finds his way back to Connor. “You ready to go?”

Connor looks back to him, his lips tugging up into a small smile, the smallest of nods, as he speaks. “Yes. Let’s go.”

He didn’t realize until he spoke how little he wanted Connor to say that. He didn’t realize until Connor said _yes_ that he wanted him to say _no,_ that he wanted to waste a little bit more time here.

When he started this trip, he was determined. He had a plan and he was going to stick to it. Cross the border. Get through Canada. Get into Michigan. Buy a gun. Shoot his father. Easy. He’d call Tina with false stories about how much fun he’s having until eventually he’d land behind bars, his face would be on the news, and Tina would figure out the truth on her own. She’s a smart girl.

It wasn’t the best plan in the world, but it didn’t need to be. Gavin doesn’t really care if he gets caught. He doesn’t care if he gets charged for his father’s murder. He doesn’t care if he rots for the rest of his life behind bars. It doesn’t matter to him. He just wants his father dead.

But then he stumbled upon Connor, and he has wheedled his way into the back of his mind, reminding him that in another future, he would have never discovered any of this. That he would still be in Anchorage caring for a cat and a girl and maybe, eventually, finding a boy to fall in love with. Choosing every day to be with them, never having to make a decision to leave them behind.

He doesn’t want to lose Tina. He doesn’t want to lose Latte.

He doesn’t want to lose the infinite possibilities that he could have.

But he’s going to anyways.

He can push it aside for a little bit, take a trip to a museum and watch a stranger look awed and amazed at fossils and displays, but he is going to Detroit. He is going to kill his father. Nothing is going to stop him.


	4. Zero

**4:46 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Three**

When he fell in love with Markus, it was like a sigh. Like he’d been holding his breath and suddenly, he realized, he could have this. He could have something. If Connor had known how poorly and terribly it would have ended, he would’ve kept his mouth shut. He would have suffocated himself until those feelings were snuffed out.

He doesn’t love Gavin. It hasn’t been enough days. Only two, filled with the ability to see that Gavin is much more than he pretends. Like his act is wearing thin, not up to par for a stranger. And realizing he likes Gavin, likes him more than just a silly stranger to drive across Canada with, is like _fire._ It’s like a match has struck inside of him, held above a pit of oil that is ready to consume him until there’s nothing left but ash.

And Connor knows that’s exactly what they would be if he acted on it any further than he already has. Michigan isn’t that far away. A few more days. A week, if the weather persists. It’s not enough time to have anything other than something meaningless or something so painful he will only be left with regret in the end.

When they part their ways, they will never see each other again.

He knows he could love Gavin. He knows he could love him more than anything in the entire world. He can feel that possibility in his chest, an inferno ready to burn.

He is also painfully aware of how badly this will end, no matter how he goes about it.

Worse than Markus. Worse than every girl he has ever been with. Every love he’s ever had has ended with solid reasons. Cheating or falling out of love or just the fact that they never worked to begin with.

But he can see it working with Gavin. He can see how easily they would fit together. Like two precious puzzle pieces side by side, ripped apart moments later. The perfect picture destroyed.

Get rid of the possibility. Shove it away. Set it on fire. Set it _all_ on fire. But leave the two of them intact. Whole beings that could find someone else without ever thinking about the person they once had and lost.

 

**5:35 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Three**

They eat at a little restaurant a few blocks away from a gas station where Gavin brings out two bags of junk food, tossing them into the backseat. _Backup food,_ he jokes. _In case the car breaks down._ Connor doubts that chocolate bars and bags of potato chips are the right type of food to have in case they get stranded on the side of the road, but he doesn’t argue it. Not in a serious manner. Just enough to make Gavin bite back a laugh. Always biting it back. Never letting it out.

He won’t ever kiss Gavin. Not on this trip. Not in his lifetime. He’s battling the acceptance of this—knowing the person beside him is someone he really likes, the first person in a long time that he’s actually wanted to be with beyond sexual gratification.

He won’t ever kiss Gavin, but he hopes to make him laugh. A real laugh. Not sharpened with anger or annoyance. Not humorless or questioning or awkward. _Real_.

He thinks Gavin would have a good laugh. An infectious one. Something that would hit him hard and make him smile, too, make him laugh until his face and his stomach hurt.

Mostly, he just wants him to be happy. Genuinely happy. He is full of anger, full of sadness. Connor has only known him for two days but he can see the way he carries it on his shoulders. Like a heavy weight, pulling him deeper and deeper down.

He’ll settle for as many smiles as he can possibly get, but what he wants is for Gavin to laugh, to be happy.

 

**6:16 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Three**

Connor’s an alright singer. That’s the only reason Gavin doesn’t tell him to shut up. He’s okay. Mediocre. Not the best. Just alright. He’s quiet, too. Mumbling or whispering or barely singing at all. Just enough for Gavin to hear, enough for Gavin to pretend he doesn’t hear. He’s alright. Just alright.

 

**6:38 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Three**

Gavin’s music taste ranges from absolutely awful to songs that he loves. He doesn’t touch the radio when it’s on, he doesn’t skip the songs he doesn’t particularly like. But he notices Gavin does it himself. Not often. Just when the car is incredibly quiet, only filled with the sounds of a band singing about their own troubles. Things Connor can and can’t relate to.

Things, he thinks, Gavin relates to a bit more than anyone ever should.

 

**9:21 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Three**

The weather gets worse by the second. Snow coming down so heavily that it obscures the windshield in an instant. Dark skies blurring with the dark roads. Soft grays all meshing together until they’re blending into one color.

“We should stop,” Connor says, because there is a trace of fear inside of his chest. A vine wrapped around his heart. He can picture the car sliding across the ice, slamming into a tree. He can picture himself stuck, bleeding out, the car getting buried under ten feet of snow, him freezing to death before anyone would even find them.

“Next hotel I see, alright?”

Connor looks to the sides of the road, trying to make out the signs when they appear. Too much snow covering them up, hiding the words that lurk beneath. He doesn’t know how many he’s missed, how many have blended into the already indistinguishable gray.

They must have passed a motel by now. Gas stations that they could have at least gone into while the storm passes. A warm place that isn’t this tiny death trap of a car.

 

**10:45 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Three**

The car rolls to a stop on the side of the road. Slowly off to the shoulder, snow underneath the tires crunching.

“I can’t fucking see,” Gavin says, and he looks tired. Worn down. More so than usual. “I can’t keep driving at two fucking miles an hour. We’re not going to get anywhere.”

“We can wait it out until morning.”

Gavin sighs and shakes his head. “Yeah, maybe. Unless we freeze to death here.”

“Do you have blankets?”

“In the back.”

He moves, unbuckling his seatbelt, abandoning the warmth of the front seats as he moves to the back of the car. He hears Gavin make an annoyed sound, something muttered about Connor’s ass in his face and a hand pressed against his back, pushing him towards the backseat.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“The backseat will be better for huddling for warmth,” he says, moving to the side, grabbing the blankets from where they sit in a lopsided pile with the bags of junk food that Gavin stashed back here. Maybe useful after all.

He watched a documentary once—a woman and her husband and their baby abandoned out in the snow, trying to live in a car in the hopes someone would find them, and when no one did, they tried to walk somewhere. Find a city and get help. Every time the baby went quiet the two of them feared the worst.

“I’m not huddling for warmth with you,” Gavin replies. “Stop trying to get in my pants.”

Connor smiles, not sure if it’s a condescending one or not, “I’m not. But this is entirely up to you. We could be sharing two blankets instead of having one to ourselves. It would keep us warmer. Less likely to die.”

“You’re not great at flirting. Take a hint or take a hike.”

Connor leans forward, pressing a blanket into Gavin’s hands.

“Get over yourself, Gavin. You think just because you’re a little handsome everyone wants you?”

“You think just because you’ve got an innocent face, people won’t believe you’re a slut?”

He laughs. He doesn’t mean to. It’s not even that funny, but it erupts from him so suddenly he can’t stop it. And then Gavin’s hand is at his face, pressed over his mouth, little noises muffled against his fingers.

“You’re a terrible person,” Connor says.

“And you aren’t? You’re laughing at me.”

He wants to lean forward, press a kiss against his cheek, tell him he’s an idiot. Except he can’t. So he shakes his head instead, curls up against the back seat, making himself as small as possible to pull the blanket as tightly around him as he can.

“If you change your mind, I’m here.”

“I won’t. Thanks, though.”

**11:12 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Three**

“Getting cold yet?”

“Fuck off.”

 

**11:40 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Three**

He shivers, pulls the blanket around him a little tighter, wishes for the second one that’s wrapped around Connor’s shoulders.

 

**12:01 A.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Four**

Fuck.

It’s too fucking cold.

 

**12:03 A.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Four**

“Don’t try anything or I’ll cut your fucking dick off.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

 

**12:04 A.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Four**

He moves very slowly towards Connor, stepping over the console and into the backseat, laying like a board against his chest, feeling the blankets wrap around him again. The warmth of his chest against his cheek, the soft feeling of fabric as it’s pulled up around his face. The chills in his body not subsiding—too cold for them to go away so quickly.

But Connor helps. He’s like a heater. Full of warmth. Arms that rest around his shoulders, holding him close like they’re anything more than strangers.

He closes his eyes, desperate for sleep, but they open again quickly. Not used to this. Not used to someone holding him without something else dancing through their mind.

And yes—

He knows Connor likes him. It’s impossible not to see. Gavin doesn’t understand. In the span of two days, the boy is smitten with _him?_ Of all people?

But it’s not like he thinks Connor would do anything. He… _trusts_ him, against his better judgement. He can feel something between them click into place. Like they’ve been here before. Like their souls have found each other in a hundred other scenarios.

“Are you okay with this?” Connor asks quietly.

He doesn’t know.

The last time someone held him like this, he was abandoned.

And the time before that, there was a gun resting against his leg. Cold metal against bare skin, daring him to try and move.

It isn’t a secret that he craves violence. Like a need. Like a drug they pumped him full of. He hates himself for it. He hates that he wants a hand around his throat. He hates that he liked it when people tossed him aside after they were done. He hates that it was a thousand times more preferable to be thrown like a sex doll, bruises left against his skin, never able to use his voice, than the soft touch of Connor’s arms around him.

It is likely why his boyfriend left him—too violent of a man. Too much of a craving to be hurt instead of loved. It’s what he knows. And he feels so _guilty_ for it. Who could be raised like him? Hurt and abused like he was? Only to find himself wishing for more? It is an unbearable shame. Impossible to ignore. Leaves knots in his stomachs that won’t untangle. No matter how many nights he cries and tries to convince himself he doesn’t want to be held down like that again.

Connor holding him like this makes him feel like a fragile doll that will break.

He’s meant to be strong. He isn’t meant to have any of his cracks showing through. He isn’t meant to be feeling like this.

“It’s fine,” he says, finally answering Connor’s question.

 _Hold me a little tighter,_ he doesn’t add. Not in the painful way. Not with the hand on his ass that brings tears to his eyes. Not with the grip so tight on his thigh it left bruises behind that the next guy looked at with giddiness in his voice.

 _Hold me a little tight,_ he wants to say, _like you care._

Like Tina held him when he first broke down in front of her. Tight arms and quietly whispering apologies. Like his boyfriend did when he first showed him the scars.

Hold him like he wants to be held, with every ounce of love and caring that a human can possibly possess, and _don’t let go._

**12:49 A.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Four**

Gavin’s body is…

Comforting.

He doesn’t know how to explain it, except that it feels right. Like they fit together perfectly. He feels like he’s fallen down an extremely slippery slope.

Chloe had always told him that he was like this. Capable of falling in love with someone at the drop of a hat. Never able to let them go. He falls for everyone just a little bit. It takes very little for him to look at someone and think about how they could be together. Daydreaming about a future where he might be happy with someone. Skip all the strange parts of a new relationship. Jump to being able to comfortable wrap his arms around them, leave kisses on their foreheads.

He doesn’t love Gavin. He’ll tell himself that again and again if he has to. It’s the truth. It is impossible to love someone based off so little.

But it is a slippery slope.

And Chloe was right.

He could snap his fingers and the next thing he’ll know, he’ll be leaning on one hand, watching Gavin with a small smile, wonder in his eyes at this marvelously strange boy.

 

**1:18 A.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Four**

He might die here. In this stupid car with this stupid stranger so close to him. He might die here, in the middle of Canada, because his stupid car is a piece of shit. He’s going to freeze to death in Connor’s arms. And all he can think of is that he never said a proper goodbye to her. He never got to hug her tight and whisper to her how much he was going to miss her. He never got to tell her that he loves her. That she means everything to him. That without her, he would be dead now a hundred times over.

He said goodbye to his cat. He cried into her fur as she struggled to get away from his sobs. He pressed a dozen kisses against her head and talked to her for an hour about how much he was going to miss the little furball.

But he never told Tina.

And he never told his sister.


	5. Embers

**7:48 A.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Four**

He knows it’s going to be a bad day when he wakes up. He can feel all the muscles in his body protest it. Sore from shivering in the cold, sore from laying like this, unable to move. He lays still for a minute, face turned, ear pressed against Connor’s chest. For a moment, he doesn’t hear a heartbeat. For a moment, he thinks Connor, with how cold his skin is, might be dead. And then he hears the breathing, feels the chest move beneath him.

_Awake._

“This was a terrible idea,” he whispers.

“But you’re alive and warm.”

Warm is debatable. Alive—

Physically, yes.

“Are you going to let go of me?”

Connor’s arms tighten around him for a moment. A comforting squeeze. He can almost picture the smile that’s on his face right now. Probably light and soft, barely visible. Gavin can’t turn his head to confirm, he’s afraid he’ll realize how close he actually is to him. It’s making his chest hurt with a scary kind of pain that makes him wish it was a sign of cardiac arrest instead of—

Whatever the fuck _this_ is.

The arms around him loosen, though, and he moves away, keeping his eyes away from Connor, muttering an apology as they untangle their limbs. It’s fucking freezing and all he wants is to lay back down again in what little warmth Connor’s arms provided.

“Here,” Connor says. “Take this.”

Gavin glances at him for a moment, looking at his stupid messy hair now that his beanie has slipped off his head in his sleep. He could punch him for it. Looking like that at the fucking break of fucking dawn. Piece of shit.

Connor wraps the fabric of his scarf around his neck, rests the ends around his shoulder.

“Thanks,” he mutters, half sarcastic, but he buries his face into it, hides what little warmth in his body rushes to his cheeks. It smells like Connor. And he unfortunately is all too aware of what Connor smells like now. Shitty hotel soap and an undercurrent of pine.

 

**8:02 A.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Four**

They get out of the car and into one foot of snow. Both of them trying their best to clear the windows of it. The car starts—much to Gavin’s relief, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Stuck here in glittering white snow. Connor watches Gavin kick at it, muttering something about hating the winter. _Too fucking cold._

He can’t blame him, and it’s almost amusing watching him kick at snow as if it will do anything. It doesn’t even provide the same kind of satisfaction that comes from breaking something to release built up anger.

“Do you want me to push the car?”

“With your puny fucking arms? No. It won’t go anywhere.”

“My puny arms could help.”

Gavin rolls his eyes, but sits back in the car, starting it up again, “Fine. Go ahead. Push with your puny arms.”

He does. He tries his best. They both do. For an hour they switch back and forth, Gavin always determined he can do a better job at pressing the gas pedal or pushing the car than Connor can. He isn’t, though. The car doesn’t go anywhere.

When they finally give up, when Gavin mumbles about having to call a tow truck to help them out, he looks like a wounded animal. Like his precious baby car has finally stopped working for good.

“This sucks,” he says quietly, watching the guy pull the car from the snow. “We’re never going to get anywhere.”

“Perhaps you should accept your life in Canada.” Connor replies.

Gavin looks over at him, shaking his head. “I’m not nice enough to be Canadian.”

Probably not.

 

**10:18 A.M. | Bee Jay’s Service / Day Four**

Two of the tires are flat. Not news that Gavin appreciates. Connor offers him a cup of coffee in the hopes it will lighten his mood. As many sugars as he’s seen him use. Too many, if Connor was allowed an opinion. He’s not, though. Someday, maybe, he can tease Gavin about it. Stop smoking and stop drinking so much coffee with so much sugar.

“This fucking sucks,” Gavin says.

“You can always learn how to be nice,” Connor replies. “Since you’re going to be forced to live in Canada now.”

“Don’t joke about that shit.”

“No?”

“No.”

 _No,_ he says, but he’s smiling, shaking his head. He’s still wearing Connor’s scarf, keeps it tucked around his face when he isn’t taking sips from the cup. He could ask for it back. He would if he didn’t look so good wearing it. Cozied up and warm.

It makes him sigh like an absolute idiot.

 

**12:36 P.M. | Andrea’s Restaurant / Day Four**

“You seem unhappy.”

“We’ve been on the road for nearly six days now,” Gavin says. “And we aren’t even halfway out of Canada.”

“Technically, it’s been four days, barely, not six.”

“Not much better. I should be in Michigan by now. But _you_ had to go to some shitty museum.”

Connor smiles, “Yes, and I’m sorry for that.”

Gavin isn’t. Although, sometimes he is. He switches back and forth. On one hand, when he’s happy, when he’s laughing with Connor, he’s glad. He gets to pretend for a moment that Connor will kiss him on the forehead again. Treat him with the kindness he was never afforded. Know that it’s not impossible, that it’s just bad luck he’s stumbled upon terrible person after terrible person.

And other times, he fucking hates it. He regrets it more than anything else. He doesn’t deserve it and he’ll never have it again.

“No more stupid stops, okay? At this rate, it’s going to take us a month before we make it to the border.”

“At least that month will be spent with you.”

Gavin looks up at him, trying to decipher if that was actual flirting or a joke and he can’t tell the difference from Connor’s expression because he’s smiling like an absolute idiot and Gavin sort of wants to reach forward and slap it off of him.

“I’m going to kick you to the road, Con, and you’ll have to find someone else to drive you.”

“And he likely won’t be as cute as you.”

“Stop,” he says, because he knows this time Connor is joking. “Just shut up.”

“Okay. Although, you’re smiling and that’s—”

“If you fake-flirt with me one more time I’m going to punch you.”

“Who said it was fake?”

Gavin leans across the table, his hand coming up to hit Connor’s shoulder. Playful punch like the ones Tina gives him when he’s being an idiot.

“I’m being serious.”

“Okay, okay,” Connor says, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll stop.”

But that smile on his face—

Stupid, idiot smile. It makes Gavin smile too. It makes him wish he could afford to spend a month in Canada with him. It makes him wish this trip didn’t end with him in jail.

He makes him happy even when he’s pissed off about the car, about the miles still left, about his life in general. He makes him laugh even when he’s tired and exhausted and just wants to sleep and shut out the world. It’s a strange kind of magic Connor possesses. A stupid little spell put on his head. Special. To be protected, to be savored and saved.

It is going to hurt very badly to part from him.

**1:21 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Four**

They get the car back. Finally. _Finally._ On the road once more, white snow drifting lazily through the sky. They can drive maybe five hundred miles still. Enough to get a good portion of the drive done. He won’t have to listen to Gavin complain as much if they at least make it to the next city. _North Battleford._ He can convince Gavin to stop there, even if it isn’t as far as he would like to go.

Although, he knows it’s partially his fault that they aren’t even close to the border yet. Not that he slashed the tires, but the museum. Him in general. Connor’s existence in this car. He keeps making Gavin stop at diners, make him stop earlier in the night than Gavin wants to. Forces him to sleep, to eat. If he wasn’t here, Gavin would be in Michigan already, doing whatever it is that he’s gone to do.

 _Visit his brother._ Isn’t that what he said? Isn’t that what they both said?

He looks away from the road, away from the snow piled up on the side of it, of the buildings and trees clustered along the way. The heater is blasting but he still feels cold from last night, from the day of walking on sidewalks slick with ice. It’s like it’s settled inside of him. Blank white cold. Ice cube sitting inside of his stomach, making the stiffness of his body even worse.

“Gavin—”

“Listen, if you want to have some deep stupid fucking talk about our feelings, it’s not going to happen.”

“No? You don’t think it’s necessary?”

“No.”

He looks away from him, back to the snow. So comforting. Glittering diamonds. Always glitter, shining so brightly. He needs to make a snowball. Pack it tight. Hit Gavin as hard as he can in his stupid face. He deserves it. He wants to shove snow down the back of his shirt, push him into the pile. Kiss him. Kiss him and let him know what an absolute idiot he is. He can make as many jokes as he wants, but he’s serious.

He wants this.

Even if he knows he shouldn’t have it.

Maybe that’s why he wants Gavin so badly, too. A desire for something unobtainable is hard to resist.

“Pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over,” he says. “Let me out.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to be in this car. Either pull over or I’m jumping out.”

“Go ahead and fucking jump, Con, I’m not letting you out.”

“Why?”

“Some other creep is going to pick you up.”

“So I should trust you?” he asks, looking back to him. “Instead of a different stranger? Pull over.”

“Not if you’re going to—”

“Pull over, Gavin.”

“No.”

_“Gavin.”_

“Fine.”

He expects the car to jolt to a stop with the force that Gavin puts on the break. He expects to fall forward and feel the seatbelt strangle him. But it doesn’t. The car slows, but it doesn’t stop. He watches Gavin hit it again. Again. Again.

And it’s like he’s a little kid again. Not weightless like he was back then, not feeling like he’s in the air, like everything is floating around him—he’s heavy, ready to sink to the bottom. But Connor can almost feel cold water in his lungs, can almost hear the sounds of his brother screaming.

The car is going to crash. He can hear the sound of fists pounding against glass. The sound of desperate gasps for air. Trying not to scream. Trying not to let the water kill him faster.

“Gavin—”

“I know.”

“I was just—”

“Calm down, alright?” he says, but there’s fear in his voice. He’s just as scared as Connor is. Putting on a brave face, doing very little. “There’s an emergency brake. It’s fine.”

“It’s fine?” his voice is high pitched, stupid, but he thinks he sees water outside of Gavin’s window. He thinks he sees the fish and the trash floating by.

The car comes to a stop. Abrupt and angry. Connor is out of the car before Gavin can even shut it off, walking away from it quickly, hand on his chest, trying to still his heart.

Right now, if Gavin knew, if he knew absolutely anything about him, maybe he’d understand. Maybe he’d care. Maybe he wouldn’t be standing back by the car calling his name in false concern.

Everything feels like pretend when he’s upset. It’s a crushing agony. Anxiety swarming through his body, telling him no one actually cares. And maybe—

Maybe it’s actually true this time.

Gavin doesn’t know him. Gavin doesn’t care about him. How many times has he made that clear? _A dozen. A hundred. A thousand._

“Connor?”

“Don’t touch me,” he whispers, but Gavin’s hands are on him, touching his arms, reaching to the hand held against his chest, pulling it away gently.

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s fine. We’re alive.”

And how is he supposed to believe that, when there’s water lodged in his lungs right now, telling him he’s six years old, watching a car fill with water?

“I’m fine,” he says, pushing Gavin away. “We’re fine.”

“No harm done.”

“No harm done,” he repeats.

 

**2:37 P.M. | Yukon 1-E / Day Four**

The tow truck driver makes a joke when he shows up about seeing them again. Connor watches Gavin roll his eyes, every bit of humor he was still possessing today gone in an instant. There’s still fear racing through Connor’s chest, adrenaline taking place of blood in his veins.

“It’s a special kind of fucked-up day, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Connor agrees. “And maybe being Canadian is overhyped?”

Gavin glances towards him and he smiles but it’s fake and brief. He’s trying, but Connor understands. This was the last straw. His entire day has shattered with this.

“I guess we find a place for the night.”

“I suppose so. There aren’t many good ones around.”

“No, but it will be warmer than you.” Gavin says, stepping away from him.

Maybe so.

 

**4:43 P.M. | Kathy’s Kitchen / Day Four**

It is intensely difficult to find a way to waste time in a tiny town with no car until a motel will let the two of them check in. The two of them walk from store to store, trying their best to stretch out their visit as long as possible. It’s hard to spend more than an hour wandering around a liquor store or a gas station without getting weird glances from the workers and it’s too fucking cold to walk around outside.

The instant one of them mentions food, they’re both eager to go spend their time sitting inside of a restaurant, stretching out picking their food choices, eating as slow as possible.

“This day fucking sucks,” Gavin says, pushing at the food on his plate.

“Yes,” Connor agrees. “Just… one of those days, yes?”

“Yeah,” he mutters, stabbing at a fry. “The world is against me.”

“It isn’t against me?”

“You don’t seem like you’re in a rush to get to Michigan.”

“No?” Connor asks. “I suppose you think spending a month with you is much more preferable than seeing my brother or going home?”

He says it angrier than Gavin expects, watches as his face scrunches into annoyance.

“Do you even have a job?”

He doesn’t know why he asks the question. He doesn’t know why the words are forced from his lips. Like he’s actually trying to piss him off. Maybe he is. Maybe he wants to see Connor express some kind of negative emotion that isn’t pity directed at him. Maybe he just wants someone to be as annoyed as he is.

“No. Not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

“I quit.”

“Why?”

Connor sighs, pushes his plate forward, “Do you really care?”

He weighs it in his head. Finds one half of him saying yes, the other saying no. Yes, he wants to know, because he wants to know Connor. No, he doesn’t, because if he says it cruelly enough maybe Connor will realize how bad of a decision it is to like him.

“No,” he says, forcing it out as venomously as he can. “I guess I don’t.”

 

**10:54 P.M. | Big Horn Motel / Day Four**

The show is enticing. Connor always found them interesting to watch. Seeing how investigators discover murderers. Uncovering little pieces of evidence, tiny things that could have been easily overlooked.

This one is new. Advertised during commercials while he carefully went through his bag. Counting his money, taking stock of his supplies. Gavin left an hour ago. Disappeared off to the store. _Left my toothbrush at the last place. Do you need anything?_ No. He doesn’t need anything at all.

“It seemed suspicious, you know? The daughter dies, the son goes missing, presumed dead—even officially, legally _declared_ dead the second that family could. And now the mother is dead? The same way the son is meant to be killed?”

_Suspicious indeed._

“In the cases of people who die in fires, you have to make sure and confirm that the person died in the fire. You have to—to look for injuries that are consistent with a fire, but also injuries that _aren’t_. The first part of this investigation was making sure the victim died in the fire and it wasn’t used as a cover up.”

“Gavin, the youngest son in the Kamski family and the middle child, was meant to be at home the day the Kamski residence caught on fire,” he narrator starts, voice gravelly and deep, dramatic, played over pictures of the old house after the blaze had been tamed. “While his body remains undiscovered, there is no reason to believe he wasn’t killed in the fire, as he never turned up again.”

“We have no idea if Gavin really died in that fire, but we have no reason to really believe otherwise. The blaze consumed the entire house. There would’ve been very little to no body left, especially considering the technology and knowledge we had twenty years ago. In the case of the mother, we went into the investigation really wanting to know what happened and hoping it might provide some answers from the past. All we really know is that both fires weren’t accidental.”

He hears the door open, looks away for a moment to watch Gavin step into the room, setting a plastic bag down on the table near him, “What are you watching?”

“True crime.”

“Why?”

Connor looks back to the screen, watches a picture of a little girl flash across. Connor knew about her. He knew enough details to know the police were skeptical of the Kamski’s long before Gavin died. Disappeared.

He looks back to Gavin in the room, watches the way he freezes as the television drones on, listing out all the terrible details of her suicide, of her autopsy reports. _Something was happening in that house, we knew twenty years ago._

“You already know how it ends,” Gavin says, his voice shaking. “Why do you care?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dad got away with it.”

_Dad got away with it._

Hank always told him he makes too many leaps, reads things too deeply.

Gavin is a common name.

Detroit is a big city.

_Dad got away with it._

He looks an awful lot like Elijah Kamski, though, doesn’t he?

“Shut it off,” Gavin says, and his voice is quieter this time, desperate, drowned out by the narrator and police talking about their theories. Nothing they can prove though.

Little girl Kamski is dead. Sad mother Kamski is dead.

Gavin Kamski is supposed to be dead.

Connor knows how to push people’s buttons. He knows how to get them to talk. It’s very easy to do it wrong. It’s easy to push too far. But he knows how to do it.

So he doesn’t turn the the television off. He lets it play.

“Connor.” Gavin states his name. A little bit louder than before, a little bit angrier. He’s refusing to look at the screen, refusing to listen to the things people are saying. How many of them are convinced the father did it, all of it. A criminal mastermind killing his family off one by one.

_Dad got away with it._

“It’s just a show,” he says. Simply. Innocently. _What’s wrong, Gav?_

“Turn it off.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so. Turn it the fuck off.”

“No.”

Gavin steps forwards, hands at his sides curling into fists. He’s trying. He’s trying his hardest not to yell. Maybe the fact he looks so close to tears is helping him. Balancing each other out. Anger and sadness. Fury and sorrow. Some sort of sick stabilization. Holding back the tears by keeping his body frozen solid, unmoving. Not even his jaw and his voice working correctly.

“Just turn it the fuck off. I don’t want to watch it. It’s sick. People—People making money off of this stuff? People getting entertainment when someone else was killed or-or raped? It’s revolting.”

He doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t move.

It seems to make Gavin angrier. Maybe he can tell what Connor is doing. Forcing him to react. Forcing him to say something. He shouldn’t. It’s wrong. It’s wrong to push Gavin’s buttons like this but—

He looks an awful lot like Elijah Kamski, doesn’t he?

And he is _curious._

Hank always told him he was too curious for his own good.

And today is a bad day. A day of anxiety and annoyance. A day of being on edge. A day of pushing buttons when he should leave well enough alone.

“Give me the remote.”

“No.”

“Connor—” his voice is rising. He’s fighting it, making his tone waver. “Give me the fucking remote.”

“Or what?”

“O-Or what?” he scoffs. “What, you think I’m going to hit you?”

“You want to.”

Connor doesn’t believe it’s the truth. He doesn’t believe Gavin actually wants to hit him. He has anger built inside of him that he doesn’t know how to deal with, but he wouldn’t redirect it Connor. Not physically. Maybe he’s just a stranger. Maybe everyone thinks like that before something happens.

But he sees Gavin. He sees how he looks away from the television screen when a fight sequence starts. He sees the way he watches other couples at restaurants or gas stations, like he’s waiting for one of them to hold onto the other a little too tightly.

He wouldn’t harm him. He doesn’t want to harm him.

“Fuck you.”

He turns, glancing only once at the television, stopping for a moment. A clip of the two remaining Kamskis trying to fend off paparazzi. _No questions—leave us alone—I didn’t kill her._ Gavin looks like he’s going to punch the screen. He takes a step towards it, hesitates with his fist clenched tight, fingers curled, ready to break something.

And then he leaves, door slamming on his way out.

 

**12:04 A.M. | The Brass Rail / Day Five**

He knows he shouldn’t drink. He knows that who he is as a person—he could very easily slip down into an alcoholic mess. Using booze to make him forget everything else. Make it all a little more foggy. Not so heavy. Not so much of a weight that sometimes it’s difficult for him to drive without thinking of all the trees he could steer his car into. There are moments, like today, when something could have happened. The car could have crashed into a building, off the side of the road and into a ditch. It could have killed him. Some days, he doesn’t know if he wishes it had or if he’s grateful it didn’t.

But it’s also not as if he doesn’t drink. He just usually has Tina with him. Designated girl to tell him when to stop. Pry the drinks from his hands, replace them with cigarettes. They’ll kill him just as bad, they’ll be just as terrible as an addiction, but at least he won’t be incapacitated.

He wants to be incapacitated.

He wants to forget his own name.

_Kamski. Kamski. Kamski._

Gavin sits at the bar. Orders one drink after the other. Tries to pace himself. Make it last as long as possible. Pretend he’s watching whatever is on the shitty television. Tries to read the captions as they roll across the bottom in tiny print, all caps. And, when he’s ready, when he returns to the motel, hopefully Connor will be asleep and they can forget this happened in the morning.

His thoughts keep slipping back to Connor.

_You think I’m going to hit you?_

_You want to._

No. No. Nononononononono—

He downs his drink, asks for another. He can’t cry here. He needs to get rid of this feeling in his chest. Like cotton shoved inside of his body, replacing his lungs.

 _You want to._ Another. _You want to._ Another. _You want to._ Another.

He didn’t. He did. He doesn’t know. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to break something. He wanted to see fragments on the ground to replicate this feeling inside of his head. Broken and useless. He wanted to smash that television. He wanted to rip the remote from Connor’s hand and throw it against the wall, watch it shatter into plastic pieces.

But he didn’t. That counts for something, doesn’t it? He didn’t want to hurt Connor and he didn’t throw or destroy anything.

Except himself. Except now, with too many drinks in his system too late at night, vision blurring, tongue not functioning properly, feet not moving quite right. He didn’t do it. He didn’t want to. Connor was _wrong._

If he knew who Gavin was, if he knew what he’s been through, he’d know he’d never do that. He’d never hurt anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont know anything about cars and if you call me out you are BLOCKED


	6. Inferno

**3:34 A.M. | Big Horn Motel / Day Five**

He’s drunk. Connor knows he’s drunk. He stumbles into the hotel room, tripping over his feet, landing at the end of the bed.

Connor is—

He doesn’t know how to act. He never knows how to act around people that are drunk. Hank was one thing—picking up after his messes, cleaning him up, trying his best to fix him. Markus didn’t drink, not heavily.

And he—

He doesn’t drink.

Too scared to lose whatever control he has over himself. If his drunk-self will act on thoughts he’s done a decent job of controlling. And he knows how slippery of a slope this can be. He didn’t watch Hank get addicted to alcohol, but he knows what his personality is like. Craving a break from something, a distraction.

If he hadn’t moved around so much as a teen, if he’d been able to stay put for longer than a few months, if his brother wasn’t keeping a watchful eye on him—

He knows the type of person he’d be. Drug addicted and an alcoholic. Having sex with whoever he could. Hurting himself in ways that he can excuse because it isn’t a knife to his skin, so it isn’t the same.

He doesn’t drink.

And it seems like Gavin hasn’t in a while, either. The way he flops down on the bed, his words slurring together, trying again and again to say something that Connor can’t make out.

“What?”

“I said you’re _beautiful,_ you fucking idiot.”

Connor smiles, for a moment, before he shakes his head. He can see the tears in Gavin’s eyes. The way he crawls across the bed towards him.

“You’re drunk—”

“Yeah?” Gavin says, leaning forward, alcohol and cigarettes on his breath. “You wanted to fuck me before, you don’t want to fuck me now? I’m all loose and ready for you. I won’t fight you this time.”

“Gavin—”

“Come on,” he says, leaning back, fumbling with his shirt, realizes he can’t get it off with the jacket still on and he groans, wrestling with the fabric.

Connor can’t move. He’s frozen solid, like someone has tossed him out into the cold.

“Stop,” he says suddenly, so quickly it surprises himself with how loud and serious it is. “Stop it, Gavin.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not what you want.”

“When has what I wanted ever fucking mattered?”

Connor reaches forward, catching Gavin’s hands, stopping them from pulling the hem of his shirt up.

“It should have always mattered, Gavin,” he says. _I’m sorry it didn’t._

“Fuck you.”

He’s used to this. Anger and violence surfacing when alcohol has taken over. He’s used to it. He’s used to all of it. And he knows it’s just the alcohol talking, he knows that if the situation where different, if ~~Hank~~ Gavin was sober, he wouldn’t be like this.

“Gavin, you—”

“I want to kiss you,” he says, quickly, words falling apart, tumbling so close together that it takes Connor a moment to process them. “And I—I just—I—I wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I was supposed to get away.”

“Gavin?”

“She never got away.”

“Gav—”

“He ruined her and I didn’t do anything to stop it,” he whispers, falling forward, the fight leaving him. “I saw and I didn’t do anything. She took so many pills, Connor. And I was happy for her. She got away.”

“Stop talking, Gavin,” he says. “Please.”

 _Please,_ he says, because he knows Gavin will regret this in the morning if he remembers. He will hate himself for spilling all these secrets. Letting them out when he can’t do anything to stop himself, when Connor is just a stranger that shouldn’t be trusted with the secrets of his past.

“My little sister was incredible, Connor,” his voice is so quiet, mumbling words together, barely audible. “And he destroyed her.”

“Hey—”

“You know,” Gavin says, louder suddenly, falling back away from him, distance stuck between the two of them. “You know what they did to me. I’m not stupid. I know you know. Did you… did you know I was… I never fought? I never said no?”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

He raises a hand, touches his nose, “The first time they gave me this and I learned my lesson.”

“Gavin—”

“You should know this,” he says, viciously, like he’s saying these words to hurt Connor and not himself. “You want me so bad and you think I can’t tell? I can tell. I can always tell. So you should know this, right? You want to hear the details? About how they held me down? Or how about when they shot me up with drugs so I wouldn’t struggle? Do you want me to tell you about how one of them hit me until I told them all the stories about my sister, too? How many times he got off hearing about a little girl who was ruined by her daddy? How _fucking pleased_ they were to hear she killed herself?”

Gavin’s hand moves to his face again, brushing away tears with the back of his sleeves, leaving red and angry skin behind.

And Connor can’t speak.

He doesn’t have control over himself anymore.

He’s trying his hardest not to cry, not to let his body shake and shudder with how much it’s fighting all of this pain shoved towards him.

“There’s more. Do you want to hear the rest?”

“No.”

“Then you should.”

“Gavin, please—”

“My dad used to sit me down in front of a computer and make me watch videos with him. They weren’t of little kids, but they were so—” he chokes, the words fall out so quickly, so quietly, Connor can’t make them out. He thinks he hears the word _brother._ He thinks he hears the name _Eli._

But he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t want to ask.

“Don’t fucking dare feel sorry for me,” Gavin whispers when he catches sight of Connor’s face.

But what else is he supposed to feel?

He doesn’t say anything. There aren’t the right words to say. Or, if there is, he doesn’t know them. But he does move across the bed, he does tentatively take Gavin into his arms, lets him cry against his chest, laying so close together as the night goes on.

He doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but he knows it’s after Gavin has stopped crying, it’s when the sun has started to rise.

 

**7:50 A.M. | Big Horn Motel / Day Five**

He wakes up the next morning on very little sleep, with his head aching and his body hating him. It takes only a glance at Connor to know what happened last night. He doesn’t have any of the details, but he’s smart enough to know the general idea.

It happened once with Tina, too.

Except he didn’t let her know the part about him. About the old men. About the occassional woman. About how he never said no. How he encouraged it sometimes because he knew it was all he had to offer. He never told her, because he knew what she would say. _Not your fault. Not your fault. Just a kid. You were just a kid._

Sixteen, forced to beg for it sometimes.

All to get away from _him,_ away from his father.

Eli had nightmares when they were kids. Started young enough that their mother got him pills. Sleeping pills. Dose him up, leave nothing but blank blackness to engulf him. Gavin stole them, popped them every night he could. They didn’t work for Eli, but they worked for Gavin.

They worked for his sister.

Smuggled away to her. Make it a little bit easier every night.

If she wasn’t awake, she could pretend it didn’t happen.

That’s what she wrote in her suicide note, before it was burned to ashes by their mother in the fireplace. _Nobody can know, Gavin. You have to keep this secret._

Nobody can know your father likes little girls.

Nobody can know your father likes to hit little boys.

Nobody can know your father forces his children to watch pornography.

Nobody can know.

Nobody can know anything.

And all he could think was—

_At least she’s free now._

He knows without more than a minute, without much more than the realization that he got drunk the night before, that his bad day yesterday wasn’t a bad day at all. Just barely a hindrance. The world against him.

Today is the bad day. Today is the day he’s against himself. His own mind breaking and collapsing in on itself. Today is the day he doesn’t want to get out of bed. The day he doesn’t want to look in the mirror or get dressed or move. He doesn’t want to be a person. He wants to stay here, hope that if he lies in one spot long enough that sleep might grace him, pull him down under so he can not exist for a few more hours.

But they have to go.

_They have to go._

But he doesn’t want to move.

Or, even when he wants to, when he wants to throw every distraction at himself that he can, he can’t make his legs move. Like he’s paralyzed completely.

 

**8:16 A.M. | Big Horn Motel / Day Five**

“I checked the room out for another night,” Connor says. “Is there anything I can do?”

Gavin doesn’t reply.

He hasn’t said a single word.

It’s not a new situation.

He’s watched Hank go through this a thousand times, and he has felt useless and hopeless every time.

 

**4:02 P.M. | Big Horn Motel / Day Five**

Connor brings him food. Pushes paper bags into his hands and does his best to force him to eat. It’s not easy, but he hasn’t seen Connor look this determined before. Like he might actually slap Gavin out of this. He wishes he would. Violence is something he’s grown used to. It’s something he understands. Something, sometimes, he craves.

He doesn’t understand kindness.

He doesn’t understand how someone could ever care.

So he eats. Not much. Barely anything at all. Enough that Connor doesn’t keep shoving it back into his hands, quietly telling him to eat more. _Come on. Just a little more._

He doesn’t speak. Neither does Gavin.

With Tina it was different, when he got into moods like this. Not always preempted by something. They would just happen. Hit him out of nowhere. She would try and drag him from the bed, force him from his spot. He might’ve crawled back every time but she never gave up. Tears in her eyes, _please Gavin, just get up, please, please—_

 

**8:41 P.M. | Big Horn Motel / Day Five**

“Can I lay here,” Connor asks quietly. “With you?”

He nods, seemingly unable to control even that tiny movement. So much of him is screaming no, as if this is an infection, as if this will destroy Connor. It will. But his head nods, because so much of him is screaming _yes, please, don’t leave me alone._

He is terrified of being alone.

Connor lays down beside him, carefully. Space between them. Not enough. Too much. _Get away._ Come closer.

_Come closer, Connor._

He wants to say that he is usually not this broken, not this damaged. He’s just a little fragile today. Treat him gently and tomorrow he’ll be okay again. But it isn’t the truth. The truth is that he isn’t fragile at all. He once was. A tiny baby, fragile and innocent. Too young to know that he’d need to build walls and weapons to protect himself.

And then he was destroyed.

And he’s been little broken pieces ever since.

Some days, he just wakes up and happens to notice how broken he really is. Fragments scattered everywhere. Futures he could never have anymore so far out of reach. Every shard of himself a reflection of who he could have been.

“Can I touch you?” Connor whispers.

 _No,_ he shakes his head, violently, more force than he means to. Connor isn’t like the others, but he doesn’t have control of himself right now. He doesn’t know how he’ll react. If he’ll be back to being that teenager, wrecked and destroyed. Bruised and bleeding. Asking for the violence because it’s all he knows, thinking its his idea until suddenly his face is slammed into glass. Cracks forming. Neat little spider webs—

“Okay. That’s okay.”

His hands are shaking and he uses what little willpower he has to hide them so Connor doesn’t see how guilty he feels right now. Thoughts swirling and spiraling in his head. His stomach is in knots, fighting against everything in his head, every feeling in his chest. Every word in his head is a betrayal of the last.

 

**10:28 P.M. | Big Horn Motel / Day Five**

Connor falls asleep. He doesn’t snore very loudly, and there is something comforting about watching the rise and fall of his chest.

Gavin can’t trust himself to fall asleep, as much as he wants to.

He doesn’t want his guard down like that.

He doesn’t want to exist but he doesn’t want the nightmares and he is too much of a coward to do anything else.

 

**5:07 A.M. | Big Horn Motel / Day Six**

“Hey,” he says, voice quiet, trying his best not to wake Connor. It’s the first time he’s moved, the first time he’s tried to speak. His voice is a little rough, a little hoarse.

“Everything alright?”

“Did I wake you?”

“No. I came into work early,” she says. “Gavin. Is everything alright?”

“No,” he replies. “Can you…”

“Yeah,” Tina replies. “Of course.”

She launches into words. Letting them spill quickly, rushing together. It starts with describing where she is. Things in her workspace. How many files are on the edge of her desk. She doesn’t talk about the cases, she’s well aware how much it hurts to hear about the violence other people have to suffer from. Even if it’s not anything like his own.

Sometimes it is all too much to bear.

Tina switches from describing things to talking about a movie she’d seen recently. Every little detail of the plot given to him on a silver platter. Things his cat has done that made her laugh or smile. A story about her family that he’s heard a hundred times that always makes him at least laugh a little bit.

When it doesn’t, the line goes a little silent.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she means it. He knows she means it. It doesn’t do anything to help, but at least hearing the words, knowing she cares, means more than the emptiness in his chest. “You want to talk about it?”

Yes.

He does.

But he is scaring her away every time he does. Pushing her further and further back. Making her view him as just a little boy that can’t handle a little bit of pain. It’s all so trivial and stupid. But he wants to talk about it. He wants to feel comnfortable enough to tell her every detail. Explain what happened to him. His father and the strangers. Getting to Alaska. Connor.

He wants to explain how he feels, even though he hasn’t been given proper words, only contradictory statements.

 _Like emptiness,_ he wants to say. Like he’s been carved clean, nothing left of him. Nothing but misery. Just a shell without a soul. Nothing left of him. Nothing that can feel.

 _Stuffed full,_ he also wants to say. His chest feels like there has been so much shoved inside of it he can’t move anymore. It’s pressing down on his lungs, keeping them from inhaling properly. His heart is racing, trying to fight it. And his head—

His head won’t shut up. It circles back again and again. He tries to stop thinking about them, tries to stop obsessing over them, tries to distract himself as best as he can. Looking at Connor but then finding himself slipping down a rabbit hole of why he’s even met Connor to begin with. Turning on the television only to see the effects of a murder or suicide on a family. A motel room, stuffy and disgusting. Sheets that look exactly like the ones that bound his arms behind his back when three—

“No,” he says quickly. “No, I don’t.”

She’s silent for a moment. Long enough for his head to try and focus on her, what she might be doing, and then realizing—

Realizing he never would have even met her if it weren’t for his fucking disgusting father killing a thirteen year old girl who had so much hope and promise and light in her eyes until he stole it from her one night at a time.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

A beat of silence. His heart stops in his chest. His body is cold. _Please, Tina._

If she pushes, if she presses a little harder, maybe he could force all the words out of his chest. Make himself talk about it. Get it all out. Don’t bottle it up and drink it down later when it will be a thousand times worse.

 _Don’t,_ he also thinks. Because he hates himself. Because he knows how selfish he feels every time he’s upset and he needs to talk to someone. How little Tina knows but also how much she does, too. Too much.

Far, far too much.

Not nearly as much as Connor, though.

Somehow Connor swept in and stole that from him.

“Okay,” she says. “We won’t.”

And his chance is gone.

 

**7:05 A.M. | Big Horn Motel / Day Six**

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep in the bathtub. He just needed to feel closed in. Like a baby in a crib. Small, dark spaces. Confined. The need for arms around him too strong but not a possibility to have them. He can’t let Connor touch him. Never again.

He wakes to the soft knock on the door and he sits up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, curling into himself as best as he can. Every part of his body stiff and sore.

He feels better.

A little bit.

He doesn’t know how long it will last this time.

He just knows if Connor says those three little magic words, it won’t be long.

_Are you okay?_

Absolutely the fuck not.

But he is a little less damaged today. Gavin convinces himself of this every step he takes. Out of the bathroom, picking up his bag, showering it away, putting on clean clothes. He is a little less damaged today. He’s glued some of the pieces back in place in, hasn’t he?

_Hasn’t he?_


	7. Torch

**8:37 A.M. | BC-97 S / Day Six**

Gavin doesn’t say much. Their breakfast is spent quiet, barely any words exchanged between them. It’s better than yesterday. Connor knows that. He tries to make idle conversation but finds there is little he can converse with someone he knows so little about. With Hank it was easier. He could talk about things they’d do that day. A list of tasks that they would have to complete together. Taking care of Sumo or going to work. Errands in town and repairs around the house.

With Gavin, he knows so little that it’s… hard. There isn’t much to talk about with their drive. Staying on the same highway for nearly three thousand miles. It’s difficult to plan out stops. Gavin doesn’t have a navigator, only a map he bought at a gas station when Connor urged him to use something other than signs and his memory of what the internet told him. He tries his best, but it isn’t easy. Gavin never wants to stop.

And, he knows, they’re going to get lost eventually.

And Connor really can’t tell if he likes how far away they still are or not. He feels guilty, wanting to keep this going.  He needs to get to Kalamazoo. He needs to get away from Gavin. He’s fallen into this terrible, awful trap. Convincing himself that he likes a stranger. Connecting to him just because he had basic human decency and didn’t steal something away from him that first night.

But there’s more.

So much more.

Maybe he shouldn’t feel this connection to a boy like Gavin. But he does. Like their souls are tied together. Like it was fate that made Gavin notice him on the side of the road out in the cold.

It sounds silly and stupid, and Chloe always told him he was too much of a romantic, but he can’t help but feel things happen for a reason. That the feeling in his chest isn’t wrong and it isn’t stupid and he isn’t mistaking what is happening between them. The ease of which they gravitate towards each other.

There are more important things than falling in love. He knows that. He’s determined to get where he’s going. But Gavin—

When he smiles because of something Connor has said, he feels his chest light up. A little bright feeling that he’s done something good. When he listens to Gavin slowly start to sing a little louder, a little more passionate with the music, it brings this feeling of joy to his chest. In another life, Gavin could be a singer, if he had practiced more, if he had wanted it, but it doesn’t even matter if Gavin can sing good or not. Connor just likes to hear his voice, going high with the words, belting them out like nothing else really matters.

_He’s not in love. He’s not in love. He’s not in love._

It’s too soon.

But he is. Just a little bit. Because Chloe was right. He falls in love with everyone just a little bit, and he has a hard time letting go. It’s a terrible thing that has followed him through his life. Throwing him in situations where he gets attached too easily to people that leave him behind.

Like Markus.

Like Hank.

Like Chloe.

And—

Eventually like Gavin, too.

 

**12:58 P.M. | BC-97 S / Day Six**

Their conversations lull often. Breaking when a song Gavin likes comes on. And after a day of feeling rotten, sick, terrible, it’s easy to avoid talking about anything. Guilt-ridden for what he’s doing, helpless to stop it, he needs a day like this. Turning up the radio so loud he knows Connor probably is wincing from the volume, but he needs it. Shout the words alongside singers who have been robbed of a childhood like he was. People that have had their loved ones ripped from their arms just like him. Lyrics that find a way to comfort him, even though he knows they are just dragging him deeper and deeper into a mess of terrible, terrible things.

Easy to pretend they’re a comfort.

Easy to pretend they aren’t a harm.

But it is so difficult to fill a car with the sounds of happiness when he simply doesn’t feel it.

 

**3:46 P.M. | BC-97 S / Day Six**

The quieter songs, the ones that aren’t filled with anger and drums and heavy guitar, are the times they talk. Sometimes it’s only long enough for him to ask one question, sometimes there are stretches of nearly half an hour.

Connor takes advantage of them. Makes a game out of it. Passing information back and forth. Things that should matter very little, but how many people can Connor say knows his favorite food is pesto pasta? Or that his favorite color is a specific shade of blue? How many people know that although he doesn’t bake as often as he likes, he loves to make cookies. Strawberry, bright and pink with chocolate chips.

And how many people in Gavin’s life know the same details? Little things like why his cat is named Latte (simply what he had been drinking at the time he decided he needed a pet in his life—which he didn’t elaborate on) or that as a child, all he really wanted was to spend his time living in the woods. Running away to be with the trees. Living in a little cabin he would make just himself. Room for three. Him. His brother. His sister.

It was the first time he mentioned his sister without being drunk. Like he’d forgotten she’d existed.

He turns away, pressing his hand over his mouth, eyes afraid to move too far from the road. Connor understands. Sometimes he forgets about the people in his life, too. That they’re gone. That they won’t ever come back.

He still misses his brother every day of his life. Setting a place for him at the table where he won’t ever be. Sometimes, he sits by the phone at eight o’clock, waiting for it to ring, waiting to hear his mother’s voice on the other side.

His apartment was filled with plants when he left it behind. So much greenery that it was overtaking the place. Rescuing them from the store when other people had treated them terribly. Watering and caring for them until they were no longer sickly. Each day he was a little happier to see them a little healthier.

Connor trusted his neighbor to take care of them, although he didn’t know her very well. Instructions left written down carefully in a book, along with a drawn-out apology for how much time it will take her. Plenty of money tucked inside of an envelope to make it worth it.

There are things in life that disappear one day and it’s never the same again. He wakes up sometimes in the motels, head swimming with exhaustion, feet hitting carpet instead of wooden floorboards and he is jolted back into reality. Sometimes it’s as simple as that. Realizing where he is. Other times, he sets a table and watches an empty chair, sits by a phone for an hour, waiting for it to ring.

He understands why Gavin forgets.

He does, too.

 

**7:17 P.M. | BC-97 S / Day Six**

“Have you ever played two truths and a lie?” Connor asks.

“No.”

“It’s fairly simple—”

“I know _how_ to play, Connor. I just haven’t.”

“Do you want to?”

A sigh. Heavy and annoyed.

“Sure.”

 

**7:19 P.M. | BC-97 S / Day Six**

“I’ll go easy on you,” Connor says, teasing him in that voice that makes him want to shake his head and push him away. Playful, with a tiny smile easing its way onto his face. “I was born in August. I was adopted. I was married.”

“This is you going easy?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Fine. What day were you born? Just the number.”

“Fifteen.”

Gavin looks away from the road, just long enough to glimpse his face. He’s not very good at catching people in lies. He’s alright at reading people, just okay at deciphering what they might be feeling. But that is usually not in a situation like this. It’s usually used to figure out what level of danger he’s in. If he can get away in time. Just how angry someone is, on a scale of one to ten.

“Okay. You said you had a brother, right? Any other family?”

“Yes.”

“Cool,” he says, not really caring how sarcastic he sounds right now. “Can you tell me more about this chick you married?”

“It wasn’t a girl. It was a boy. His name was… Josh.”

“Josh?”

“He was very kind. Only ever wanted the best for people.”

“You said was, were you divorced?”

Connor sighs, soft and sad. “Yes.”

“Why’d you break up?”

Another glance, long enough to see Connor’s face is turned towards the window, a barely noticeable reflection in the window showing a small smile on his face, trying to be stopped with teeth clamped tight over a bottom lip.

“We drifted apart.”

“Oh,” he says, tapping fingers against his steering wheel. “Was he any good in bed?”

Connor laughs, “No.”

“No? Maybe that’s why you drifted apart. Or, you’re lying. You weren’t ever married.”

“Is that your final guess?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. I’ll let you win this round, then, Gavin.”

“Thank you,” he says, with mock gratitude. “Did you ever even date a guy? You don’t seem…”

“Interested in men?”

“Experienced.”

He laughs again, but this time it’s left hollow. “No. I guess I’m not. But I did. Once. A long time ago.”

“Girls more your style?”

“No—Well, not that I don’t like girls,” he says. “It’s just harder to find a guy that likes me back.”

The car goes quiet, the song playing over the speakers caught from a station they’ve passed by. A little too sad and a little too on the nose, but he can’t reach forward and turn it off. He can’t let Connor know more than he has too.

First, that he is well aware Connor likes him. Beyond all the jokes he makes to try and pretend that what happened wasn’t as serious as it was. That the first night they stopped together didn’t make his heart start up again, realize that it wanted something, that it still has the ability to beat. That the kiss against his forehead didn’t leave his entire body craving to reach forward and pull him tight because no one has ever kissed him that tenderly before.

And second—

_Second._

He gets it. He understands. All too well. Finding someone, crushing on them, wanting more. How many people at work did he almost think he could be with? How many did he slip into a phase of blushing and softening himself to seem more desirable? How many one-night stands became two or three because he thought the guy was cute and nice enough that they could accept the damaged ugly thing that is his soul?

He hasn’t loved anyone in a long, long time.

Gavin has changed and altered himself to be something that people might want and they still never gave him a second look.

But Connor has.

Connor is looking at him right now, trying to find words that will erase the tension he’s accidentally caused. Connor is looking at him like he has for a while. This morning, leaning on one hand, smiling because Gavin laughed at the names of the food listed on the laminated and sticky pages. How many puns they tried to fit into one title, so many words crammed together, trying to cover all their bases.

Ridiculous.

And Connor has looked at him dozens of times like that. Glances with little smiles, so happy that Gavin has found amusement in something. He catches those. He pretends he doesn’t. He throws them away because nobody has ever really wanted him.

His soul is a damaged ugly thing, his heart is dead and broken.

But Connor is looking at him.

“It’s your turn,” Connor says, a little too quietly, a little too aware at what he’s done.

“Right,” he says. “Okay.”

And he thinks.

And thinks.

And thinks.

Trying to come up with two truths and a lie. Trying to come up with two things in his life that he hasn’t told Connor yet and don’t reveal all the hideous nature of his past. But the only facts about his life that are surfacing now are the bad ones. The scars on his arms, caused by his father, by strangers, by himself. The family he’s lost. His brother, his sister, his mother. Tina. The cat.

It’s so much more difficult than he imagined.

Coming up with a lie is easy. He can come up with thousands. It’s easy to find something he wants and pretends that he has it. Lying is second nature. He’s done it for twenty years.

“Okay,” he says finally. “I’m ready.”

 

**7:23 P.M. | BC-97 S / Day Six**

“I have a tattoo. I’ve been arrested. I fucking hate strawberries.”

“The lie is the last one,” Connor says. “Nobody hates strawberries.”

“Nobody? I’m right here and I’m saying it’s the truth.”

He smiles, “You’re lying. You’re a bad liar.”

“You’re just biased,” Gavin replies. “Because all you eat is strawberry. You’re a freak, little strawberry boy.”

“Shut up,” Connor says, smiling, not even bothering to hold it back. “Tell me more about this tattoo of yours.”

“It’s an owl.”

“What kind of owl?”

“Barn owl.”

He thinks about it, watches Gavin’s hands on the steering wheel, fighting the will to look over his body, to try and scan every inch of it where the owl might be. But he does anyways. Catching every curve, every shape. And then he catches himself trying to picture the skin beneath.

And then, his face feels hot and he has to look away.

“I believe you about the tattoo.”

“You want me to show it to you?”

“No,” Connor says, a little too quickly. “I still think you’re lying about the strawberries.”

“Ah, I see,” he says. “So you think I’ve been arrested?”

“With that face of yours?” he asks, looking back to him. “Absolutely. You look like a criminal.”

Gavin laughs and Connor feels his heart beat a little faster, the smile spreading across his face, splitting it neatly in two. He was right about that laugh. When it’s genuine, when it’s real, it sounds a little bit like magic.

“You’re wrong,” he says. “I haven’t been arrested.”

“No?”

“No. Never.”

“Maybe you should have been.”

Gavin’s laugh goes away, but the smile on his face doesn’t. He’s shaking his head, trying to rattle it for a comeback. And Connor likes this. He likes the jabs back and forth. It makes him feel less like an idiot in a stranger’s car.

Maybe Gavin simply isn’t as much of a stranger as he initially thought, though.

 

**11:42 P.M. | Royal Oak Inn / Day Six**

“Hey, if you—If you want…” Gavin trails off, setting his bag down. “If you want to share the bed, we can. I mean—if it’s okay with you.”

Connor nods, slowly. “Sure. You want me to make a wall between us?”

“Yeah,” he replies with a small laugh. “Please. I don’t want you getting all up in my face when I sleep, right? No cuddling.”

“None at all,” he agrees. “Strictly forbidden.”

Gavin disappears into the bathroom, door closing and shower turning on. Connor works slowly, putting his bag on a chair and moving extra pillows to rest between two halves of a bad. Dividing it so neatly in two.

No cuddling.

None at all.

 

**11:53 P.M. | Royal Oak Inn / Day Six**

He’s going to thank him.

Gavin is going to thank him. And apologize, too. For how he was yesterday. The days aren’t as often as they used to be, but they spring up on him, always make him feel ashamed and guilty when he can’t be present in his life. Instead watching the minutes tick by, waiting to feel like a real person again.

He’s going to apologize for it happening, and he’s going to apologize for being rude the night before. Letting his anger get the best of him. He shouldn’t be so cruel to him. Connor is nice. Nicer than anyone he’s met that wasn’t using it as a pretense for something else.

He’s going to thank him for being there, for forcing food into his hands and not running away. He’s going to thank him for making him laugh today, for making him smile and knowing that it was done because Connor wanted to see him happy and not to let his guard down. He’s going to thank him.

Gavin steps out of the shower, rehearsing words in his head that he can safely whisper in the dark when they’re ready to give into their exhaustion, when they won’t invite more conversation. When they can be heard and not responded too.

Words cycle again and again, ready to be spoken, ready for him to act like a decent person.

Except—

His bag isn’t in here. Clothes from today left in a pile on the floor, but no new ones to change into. His heart pounds in his chest, his hands reaching for the towel, wrapping it tight around his waist.

He doesn’t know what to do.

If he should act normal or not.

He’s never been in this situation before. People see the scars when they mean nothing to him. Meaningless sex in his apartment when clothes can be shed, although those nights are kept to a minimum, when he drinks too much too care when their face turns to disgust, when they have to weigh looking at ruined skin for a few minutes and wanting to get off. Normally, he’s in the back of clubs. Out in the alley where his hands can feel the roughness of bricks biting into his skin or in bathrooms where his head is swimming, staring at tiles that haven’t been cleaned properly in ages. Places he can keep the majority of his clothes on.

His boyfriend saw it. Pretended not to. Always looked away.

The one who tattooed the owl on his side only saw the one side of his body that wasn’t destroyed. Everything else kept carefully hidden away by the fabric of his shirt.

_Shit._

And now Connor is going to see it.

 

**11:57 P.M. | Royal Oak Inn / Day Six**

The door opens and he glances over at the sound from the television. Some old show to fill the silence. Make it not feel so all-consuming. He only glances. Only gets one second before he realizes Gavin’s naked.

Partially naked.

There’s a towel around his waist, hanging a little low.

He tries not to glance back again, but he does. His eyes skim over the tattoo, over the muscles, settle on the burn marks.

“I forgot my bag,” Gavin says, forcing out the words with an edge, with an almost pleading tone. “Sorry.”

“No need for apology, Gavin,” he replies, smiling lightly, hoping it conveys what he wants, too.

_It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay._

Everyone has scars. It’s impossible to pretend they don’t. Some are simply just more visible than others.

He isn’t entirely sure that’s what Gavin is asking him for though, what he’s apologizing for. He’s terrified in a way that Connor hasn’t seen in his eyes before. Like Connor has been giftwrapped information that he will use in terrible ways.

And, it takes little for him to understand why.

 

**1:39 A.M. | Royal Oak Inn / Day Seven**

They change places. Connor in the shower, changing his clothes quickly, coming back to the darkened room. He sits on the edge of the mattress, on the side that Gavin has left open for him. He’d heard his voice, quiet and muffled through the door. He’s seen him on the phone often. Outside of gas stations, talking between drags on his cigarettes. Leaving the room to stand in the hallway, voice quiet as a mouse so as not to wake others.

But now he lies in the dark, phone set aside.

Connor thinks he might be pretending to be asleep. There isn’t the soft sound of a snore filling the room, the breathing isn’t quite as deep as it needs to be. He might be thinking about this too in-depth, might be more curious than he should be. He ruined so much last time. Made Gavin so angry he disappeared, made him feel so terrible he couldn’t even get out of bed, would hardly even eat.

But he lays down anyways, rests a hand against the wall of pillows between them. Not quite good enough. Not quite sturdy enough. His hand wants to move across the barricade, rest against his side where the burns took over half his body.

He wonders how he took care of them, who healed them enough for him to be able to live.

“Gavin?” he whispers into the dark. “Are you awake?”

He doesn’t get a verbal answer, but he hears Gavin move. Turning over and then a hand resting on the pillows, fingers almost touching Connor’s.

 _Yes,_ he is saying, _yes, I am._

“Can I tell you something?” he asks, and when the silence stretches on long enough, he carries on. “I like you.”

“You’re an idiot. You don’t even know me.”

The quiet settles in again. Connor’s hand moves, overlapping Gavin’s, resting on them lightly, the urge to take them in his, hold them tight. Show Gavin how much he means it. How much he wants to know him, know every piece of him.

Prove how much he already knows.

 _Take a risk,_ Chloe always said. _Take a risk for those you care about._

So he does.

He leaps into the abyss with a question, a statement rolled into one.

“You’re the missing Kamski, aren’t you?”

 

**1:40 A.M. | Royal Oak Inn / Day Seven**

His stomach drops. Everything in the room swallows him up. Head pulled down, dunked under water. It’s filling him up inside, getting in his lungs, preventing him from breathing.

_Kamski._

_Kamski._

_Kamski._

“Yes,” he whispers, even though he knows he doesn’t need to. Connor knows. Connor knows because it isn’t that difficult to make the connection.

A man in his mid-thirties named Gavin with burn marks on his side, heading to Detroit. A striking resemblance to golden boy Elijah. Even Tina noticed it. Commented on it once and he had played it off as coolly as he could, convinced her that people just have faces that look like his.

It isn’t really those facts, though.

The news. The show that Connor had hesitated on. Pictures of his family flashing across the screen—

“You’re not dead,” Connor says quietly, grip on his fingers tightening, not letting him pull away. He won’t. He is too frozen in this fear to move.

 _You’re not dead,_ Connor says, but he is _wrong._ He is dead. Men have carved out everything inside of him and left him hollow. Stuffed him full of trauma and sent him on his way. He’s like a doll—his only trick is crying.

“No,” he says, confirming again, only to make sure that his voice still works. The word is so difficult to say. Two letters and he stumbles over them like they’re the things holding his head beneath the water. _No, no, no—_

A hand rests lightly against his face. Gavin didn’t even notice Connor move, didn’t feel the fingers leave his or the pillow that was pushed aside. Didn’t notice that Connor moved so much closer. Hand so warm against his skin, brushing tears away he wasn’t aware he was shedding.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” he says. “But I’m glad.”

“Glad?”

“You told me the truth. You trusted me with this.”

“You wouldn’t have believed me if I said no.”

“No. I wouldn’t have—”

“Can you just—” Gavin sighs, reaching up, out to him. Hand fisting into the fabric of his shirt, loosening slowly. “Can you shut up?”

He sees the shadowed outline of Connor’s head nod. And neither of them move. Neither of them budge from their spots. Connor’s hand stays on his face, thumb passing gently against his skin, sweeping away tears. Gavin’s fingers stay clutched in his shirt, trying desperately not to pull him forward, not to smother him with a kiss, not to deal with this sadness the only way he knows how to.

He waits.

Waits.

Waits.

Trying to think, trying to sort out everything in his head. If he can risk this. If he can kiss Connor and fuck him and feel okay in the morning that he hasn’t ruined the rest of their trip. It’s the only solution he can think of. Sexual gratification to ease away pain. The two are inherently tied together in his life.

“Are you going to leave?” he asks instead. Instead of _can you kiss me, can you fuck me, can you ruin me?_

“No,” Connor says. “No, I’m not.”

And he leans forward. So close. _So close._ Presses a kiss against his forehead, moves slowly to his temple, his cheek, his nose.

He does not kiss Gavin on the lips, but he hesitates there, waits. Gavin could move upwards, pull him down. It would take so little. A tiny movement. Kiss him with everything he has every wanted. Swallow him whole. Fuck him. Ruin him.

“You can’t,” Gavin whispers, and even just the act of moving his lips, of letting the words form and pass, makes him realize how close they actually are.

“Why?”

_Why?_

As if Connor doesn’t know.

“You don’t want me. It would be a mistake. Bad decision.”

Everything with Gavin is always a mistake, always a bad decision. Every person that has ever been with him has said so, had it written on their face. The only people that haven’t cared about taking a piece of him have done it against his will or in the back of a club, pressed between the grime covered walls of toilet stalls.

“Maybe I need to make a bad decision.”

He laughs, a little bit. It feels strange and rotten in his chest.

“You shouldn’t.”

He shouldn’t.

And he doesn’t.

Connor pulls away, Gavin’s hand in his shirt letting go so slowly because all he really, really wants is for Connor to make that stupid mistake. He isn’t used to people listening to him. He isn’t used to anyone listening to what he wants.

“Get some rest, Gavin.”

He’ll try, he’ll fail.


	8. Burned

**10:36 A.M. | AB-43 S / Day Seven**

They act like it never happened, which Connor supposes he should have seen coming. He should have known. It doesn’t make it hurt any less. How is he supposed to forget what happened? How is he supposed to pretend that it meant nothing? How is he supposed to keep being in this car, sitting beside Gavin, acting as though he didn’t want to kiss him with every fiber in his being? That the only thing stopping him was because he needed Gavin to kiss him first?

He couldn’t take it from him. He couldn’t be like the others. Gavin needs to want it. He needs to initiate it. It has to be him.

 

**12:17 P.M. | AB-43 S / Day Seven**

“Gavin?”

Said soft, gentle, scared. Like all his words today. A little bit frightened. Probably regretting the night before. Likely not as able to reconcile it with stupidity as Gavin is.

“Yeah?”

“I think we should stop in North Battleford. We can do laundry. Eat dinner. Stay the night.”

“North Battleford isn’t even six hours away. You want me to waste another perfectly good day of driving so we can do laundry there? We can stop later.”

“Quite a bit of laundromats close early,” Connor says. “If you want to make sure it’s all done… it’s best not to wait until we get as far as Regina. We’d have to do it in the morning. At least this way, we can leave the second we wake up.”

“You always want to go out to eat breakfast.”

“Not necessarily my choice,” he reminds him. “Every motel you’ve stopped at doesn’t offer complimentary breakfast.”

“Fucking fast food works just as well. Or are you going to launch into a speech about clogged arteries?”

“I’ll save the health talk for when you smoke your next cigarette.”

Gavin exhales, tapping fingers, trying to change his focus. “Is there anything special about North Battleford?”

“No. I just thought it would be a good stop.”

“You’re not trying to get another night with me, are you?”

“No. I’m just tired of seeing you wear that shirt. You need to clean it. It’s disgusting. You’re disgusting.”

He looks over, catches Connor smiling, but knows it isn’t real. They’re trying. They’re trying desperately and they’re failing. Doing an awful job at this. Pretending that Connor didn’t kiss him.

He didn’t.

Or he did.

He isn’t really sure how to classify it.

A forehead kiss is still a kiss, isn’t it? It’s just not the one he wanted. And the one against his temple, his cheek, his nose—

Even his last boyfriend didn’t treat him that way. Avoided his scars as often as he could. Pretended the one across his face never existed, even though it’s the one that’s the most difficult to ignore. Annoying little thing. Reminding him every time he looks in the mirror what it felt like.

“Fine. We’ll stop in North Battleford. But you’re paying for the room tonight. And the laundry.”

“Done deal.”

 

**4:56 P.M. | Laundromatic / Day Seven**

“You shouldn’t do that,” Connor says, barely glancing at him, catching him in the act of hoisting himself up onto one of the machines.

“What are they going to do, kick me out?”

“Yes.”

Gavin sighs, feet dangling over the edge. He’s tempted to kick at them. Swing them back and forth like a child throwing a tantrum or bored and in need of noise and chaos to make a day feel more interesting. He doesn’t. He has some willpower, and instead he uses it to watch Connor, sorting clothes carefully. Too much effort for him. He just wants to throw them in the machine and be done with it. Who cares if something comes out tinted blue or pink?

“Hey,” he says. _Come over here. Come over here._

He’s been ruined. He thought he wasn’t. He thought because Connor didn’t kiss him, because Connor didn’t have sex with him, that whatever is left of him is still intact but he’s _wrong._ He feels ruined. That pull towards Connor, the need to have him a little bit closer.

“What?”

_Come over here. Come over here._

Gavin reaches for the bag of almonds beside him, plucking one from the plastic carefully, tossing it towards him. It misses, hits the machine beside him, pings off and rattles across the floor. Connor barely turns, barely gives it a second though.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I’m busy.”

His feet move, hitting the machine once before he stills them and he grabs another almond, throws it, adjusting his aim. It hits Connor’s shoulder, falls to the floor with a quiet noise.

“Your laundry can wait one minute.”

“Or you could be patient for two minutes and let me finish what I’m doing.”

Another almond, this time hitting him in the back of his head.

“Stop throwing stuff, Gavin, you’re like a five-year-old.”

_Petulant child._ He smiles.

“If I start crying, will you give me attention?”

“No.”

He misses the fourth time. He thinks it lands in the machine in front of Connor, because he suddenly stops and sighs with more anger than Gavin thought Connor could possibly feel. Of course he annoys him. He tries to. Get under his skin, make him react in a way other than concern. He likes annoyed expressions that Connor casts him, because so often they are quickly followed by a small smile.

But this feels a lot more like anger, a lot more like something he didn’t mean to push this far.

Connor turns away from the machine, stepping over to where Gavin sits, reaching for the bag in his hand. Gavin is quicker, holding it above his head, happy for once that he’s the taller one. Connor still tries to reach it, presses close in his space.

And Gavin reacts before he can slow himself down. Reaching forward and tipping his chin, turning his gaze from his outstretched hand to Gavin’s face. The realization very slowly dawns on Connor. The anger easing into an almost surprise, then slipping away into a glance towards his lips.

“What are you doing, Gavin?” he asks, pulling away, retreating from Gavin’s grip. Not very far. Just enough to pretend that they’re being safe about this.

“I’m trying to be a decent person.” Gavin says, and Connor laughs, but he presses on. “I wanted to say thank you. For… everything.”

Because listing it all is too taxing. To think of every little thing that Connor has done for him. Everything that makes him feel a little bit better. Making him smile and laugh, making him act like something other than a piece of shit, making him forget that his world is going to be over before the week is up. Lock him up. Throw away the key. Doesn’t matter.

“Thank you for picking me up,” Connor replies.

Gavin shakes his head, brushes his gratitude off. He doesn’t deserve it. “I wanted to say I’m sorry, too.”

“For what?”

It’s his turn to laugh, “For everything.”

“Gratitude and an apology within the span of minute? Were you replaced with an android, Gavin?”

“Maybe,” he replies, and he is overwhelmed with the urge to pull him forward and kiss him like he has been for the last couple of days. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, something is telling him that he is being stupid. That he only likes Connor because he hasn’t returned Gavin’s cruelty with what he’s used to. That he hasn’t been one of the people to harm him. Basic human decency. That’s all Connor is giving him, and he is here, turning what could be a very simple and brief friendship into an overwhelming fear of losing him.

And he will.

Eventual. _Soon_.

“Connor?”

“Yes?”

“I want you to make a bad decision,” he whispers.

“You want me to kiss you?”

“Worse,” he says. _I want you to love me. Truly. Genuinely. Authentically._ “But you’ll regret it.”

“You think you can see the future?”

_No_ , but _yes_.

He can see how this will play out, even when he tries to give himself the best-case scenarios.

Best-case:

Connor kisses him. Connor has feelings for him. Connor visits him in jail.

Or, maybe: Connor kisses him. Connor has feelings for him. Gavin doesn’t go to jail. He runs away with him. Stays away from the police, racing through Canada, trying to live off the grid.

Or—

He doesn’t kill his father and they can have a real relationship.

That isn’t a best-case scenario, though. It’s impossible. The only reason he’s here is to put a bullet in his father’s skull. Best-case includes his father’s death. It has to. It’s the only way.

The problem is, no matter what happens, he knows it will end badly. He is not stable. He is broken and wrong. He is a bad decision. He is inevitably going to be abandoned because his problems are too big and too unfixable.

“Gavin?” Connor asks quietly, and he feels the hands on his sides, touching him, pulling at his clothes, making him slide towards the edge of the machine. “I’m not going to make a bad decision.”

“No?” he asks, his voice cracking on the word, the rejection hitting him like a slap in the face.

“No. You have to. You make it. If you want it, you do it.”

But he can’t. He can let Connor do it, he can blame it all on Connor. Put it on his shoulders. He can’t make the first move. He can’t start this. He can’t start it knowing how it’s going to end. He needs Connor to do it. He needs it to be Connor’s idea. He can’t handle the blame of one more terrible thing. He can’t chase after one more person he knows he’s going to lose.

“I’m—”

“Hey, get off the machines. There’s a sign for a reason, asshole.”

He turns towards the woman, his head hitting Connor’s, pain radiating through his skull. When he looks back, Connor has disappeared back to his laundry and he slips the rest of the way down to the floor with a quiet thud that reverberates in his heart. _Thud, thud, thud._

No bad decisions here.

**6:40 P.M. | Chicken Feed / Day Seven**

They should probably talk about this. The back and forth. The mutual desire they have for one another. They should talk about it. Sort it out. If Connor asked Gavin to come back for him, if he asked him to try and continue this after they arrive in Michigan, he might say yes. They could handle long distance, couldn’t they? Connor could visit him. They could talk late at night. It isn’t as if they didn’t both start this trip in Alaska. It isn’t as if they aren’t both ending it in Michigan. They have ties. They can find each other.

Gavin called them a bad decision.

Maybe he was onto something there.

Maybe Connor should just listen to him for once. Hear the words he’s saying and repeat them back, because they’re true. It isn’t as if Connor doesn’t have a reason he’s on this trip, too. It isn’t as if he’s guaranteed a happy ending when this is all over. He should stop trying to seek one out when it clearly has no interest in him.

 

**8:09 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Seven**

He sits on the bed, watches Gavin out of the corner of his eye as he sorts through his clothes, folding them carefully so they take as little space as possible in his bag. Gavin is pacing back and forth. Looking from the television playing an old movie to Connor’s face. It’s vaguely annoying. He wants to reach out and push him down into the chair, tell him to be quiet and be still.

_Child._

Why does he want to kiss him so badly?

Why does it feel like his insides are itching for him?

He’s a complete asshole. Terrible. Awful. Hilarious. Kind without even realizing it. _Terrible._

“I need a drink,” he whispers. He needs something to clear his head, craves it. There’s a bar in this city. They passed it on the way to the motel. Nice neon sign, secluded.

He needs to go there. He needed to go there already and he was ignoring it.

“What?” Gavin asks.

Connor shakes his head, picking up the last of his clothes, shoving them into the bag. “I need a drink.”

“Like alcohol?”

“Yes, like alcohol.”

“Oh. Do you—”

“Alone,” he says, standing quickly. “Sorry.”

He leaves quickly, his bag settled on the floor, wallet shoved in his back pocket, phone safe beside it. He’s barely used it. He didn’t think he would. He isn’t Gavin. He doesn’t have anyone to call every night. He doesn’t have anyone to reassure that he’s alive and okay.

Although—

He hasn’t seen Gavin make a phone call in a few days.

 

**10:10 P.M. | Jimmy’s Bar / Day Seven**

It’s the fifth bar he’s checked. Two hours of racing from one to the next, pushing people aside, trying to find Connor’s stupid face. Looking for that beanie pulled down, the scarf that would be wrapped around his neck. He needs to kiss him. He needs to find him. He needs to make a bad decision.

_I need a drink._ Connor doesn’t drink. He remembers that. The small comment he made, off handed. Supposed to be unimportant. _I don’t drink._ Gavin didn’t press on the issue. It’s not something he needed to ask him about.

It took him a few minutes for it to sink in, for the fear to kick him in the stomach. Connor is lying to him, but he had hoped that he was at least partially telling the truth. That he was somewhere in the city in a bar. That he could find him. The need to figure out what the fuck he’s doing here and then kiss him like they might never kiss again.

Because they won’t.

He pushes the door open, scans the cramped space, finds Connor quickly leaning against the counter, a drink in front of him that looks untouched.

Gavin moves across the space, pauses in his step when he realizes Connor is talking to someone. Smiling. For a moment, from this far away, it looks real. But it falls, reappears like he’s forcing it, hiding annoyance or anger behind it.

His eyes move to the guy. Almost as tall as Connor. Broad shoulders. Jean jacket in tatters like it was made to look cool. Patches and pins decorate the surface and he can feel something strange in his chest. Like the needle that sewed them on, the ones that stick stupid slogans to denim, are stabbing his heart over and over again. Not stitching. Undoing. He feels his heart undoing itself. Falling apart piece by piece.

When Connor looks at him, his smile disappears completely, something shifting on his face. A little bit of terror. Maybe the same terror that’s poisoning his veins right now.

The man beside Connor turns, gaze catching Gavin’s. It takes—

Not even a millisecond to register it.

Not even a millisecond to recognize it, even with the twenty years it’s been. How much he’s aged. Weight gained, hair turning a little bit gray. Sharp pinpricks in his heart turning to daggers, opening him up. He can taste blood in his mouth and he isn’t sure if it’s real.

The man doesn’t entirely seem like he recognizes Gavin at first. It takes him longer. Of course it would. Gavin wasn’t going to be his only victim—especially not in the twenty years since he last saw him. It must be difficult to sort one traumatized boy from the rest.

The smile on his face turns a little sinister. It’s always sinister, though. It’s always evil. It’s always cruel. Nothing is ever going to change that. He will always be a monster.

Gavin thought he’d never see him again. He _hoped_. He _wished_. He thought the next time he saw that face would be in nightmares or, when he dies, in hell. A tormentor. A demon.

Eddie looks back to Connor, still wearing that smile, and Connor isn’t looking back to him, barely glances when Gavin presumes he starts to speak, but his eyes switch to Gavin’s face again, stay there.

Watches him as he moves across the bar, feet like lead, moving on their own like someone else is controlling him, and maybe something _is._ He can feel the fear turning to anger. Anger turning to hate. Hate turning into a fist curled and slamming hard into his face. Again and again and again. He doesn’t feel the pain of the punches landing, doesn’t feel anything but the hatred swarming through his body, eating and destroying everything it touches. He doesn’t know if the blood spilling is his or not. He can barely tell that there’s someone hitting him back at all.

Pain is something he is used to and he has had so much worse than this.

He can hear Connor calling his name, hands on him, prying him backwards. He can see Eddie’s beaten face, the hand coming up to wipe away blood from his mouth. He frees himself from the grip of whoever is holding onto him, spins wildly to push them backwards, make them feel his wrath, too.

And they do.

It’s not Connor. That’s all he knows. Some other man in the bar. Someone that probably knows Eddie. They must. They have to. That’s how he decides this is okay—if someone is trying to help Eddie, than they must be friends, and if they’re friends, they must be just like him.

_He was sixteen._ He was sixteen and he said _no_ a thousand times.

A hand hits his head, sending his vision black and blurry, his knees to the ground, falling against the surface. He hears voices overlapping, distant and then he feels the kick against his chest. Again and again and he knows that the blood he tastes in his mouth this time is real.

“Stop!” Connor screams. _Stop, stop, stop._ He screamed that before, too. What’s to make them listen now?

He wants to tell him it’s fine. If he dies, this is the way it should go. Beaten to death in a fucking bar. At least the last person he would’ve harmed would be Eddie. At least one of the dozens of men in his life that ruined everything got a fraction of what they deserve.

“Gavin?”

Soft, gentle, scared. _Gavin._ A hand on his face, holding his cheek gently. He tries to open his mouth, to say something, but he coughs instead, agony bursting through it. All he wants is to tell him not to touch him. _Don’t get blood on yourself._

But he can’t speak, he doesn’t even want to open his eyes. He only forces them open so Connor knows he’s alive. He’s conscious. He’s okay.

And the concern twisting his face, the tears in his eyes, the way his lip quavers and his jaw trembles—

It’s too much and he squeezes them closed again. Knowing he was the cause of all that.

“Get out.”

_Get out._

_Get out._

“Can you stand?” Connor whispers.

He doesn’t know, but he forces himself to nod anyways. Connor helps him to his feet, helps him lean against his body on the way out. There’s so much blood everywhere. It swims in his vision, turning the sky and the snow crimson.

 

**10:32 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Seven**

Connor drives him back to the motel in silence. Doesn’t say a single word. Gavin watches his face, trying to find out what he’s feeling but it’s too dark. He’s struck by how strange it is to see Connor behind the wheel. His eyes keep falling closed again and again, forcing them open, terrified to fall asleep. Terrified that if they shut for longer than a blink he’ll be dead.

He half expected them to stop outside of a hospital. For Connor to push him into an ER and get properly checked out by doctors. He should. There’s so much pain along his ribs he knows something is wrong. He’s been beaten up plenty of times to know that this isn’t right.

But Connor stops at the motel, helps him up to the room, whispering apologies as they go up steps and he winces with each one. When they finally reach the room, when Connor eases him down onto the bed, a thousand emotions cross Connor’s face and only one word slips from his mouth:

“Why?”

“Why?” Gavin croaks. “Why were you even there?”

“I—”

“Doesn’t matter,” he whispers. “It’s not my business, is it?”

Connor bites his lip, looks to the wall, “No, it’s not. Who I—Who I talk to isn’t your business.”

“I know.”

Connor shakes his head, moves away to retrieve a phone, using the light on it to check his eyes. Quick neuro test to determine his stupid brain is just fine. _Hopefully._

“Did you hit him because of me?”

Gavin laughs, and regrets it in an instant. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

Not entirely. He probably would’ve been tempted to punch anyone that was talking to Connor while he had that look on his face. Half smile. Not real. _Fake,_ he told himself. But it could’ve been real. He once smiled at Eddie’s flirting too. He just didn’t realize it wasn’t flirting. It was luring.

“I knew him,” he says, and he doesn’t know why.

Because he trusts Connor? With all this information, all these details he couldn’t even tell Tina after years and years of knowing her? Because he needs Connor to believe he isn’t that much of a violent cruel person that he would hurt someone just because Connor showed the slightest bit of interest in them?

“Oh.”

_Oh._

Oh, poor Gavin, poor tortured Gavin, poor traumatized, beaten, abused Gavin.

When has pity ever changed the past?

“You should have let me kill him.”

“Gavin—”

“He deserves to die.”

Connor reaches over, touches his face again and he pulls away from it. Tired of those soft fingertips telling him he can be something other than angry and hateful. He will always be like this. He will always be terrible. He will always be awful. As much as he wants to think he isn’t, as much as he wants to tell himself that he would never hurt Connor, how can he ever really know, when it was all he was ever taught?

Love shown through bruises. Sex displayed through violence.

“I’m not saying he doesn’t,” Connor whispers. “But… _murder?”_

Not murder. Torture. Slice him open and see how far the evil lies. Don’t try to cut it out, don’t try to dissect it, don’t try to fucking understand it. Just make him feel it all as he bleeds out. A knife stabbing him a thousand times wouldn’t make up for even one minute he spent alone with Gavin.

He knows why he’s angry. He knows why he can’t let it go. He knows he has tried to push it far down into the pit of his stomach. He knows it has crawled its way up secretly, a thousand times, scratching and clawing on his throat and tongue, coming out as words twisted with cruelty.

Maybe he should just surrender to it. Maybe fury would make this world a little bit more bearable.

Connor reaches a hand up, brushes at his cheeks. Gavin didn’t even notice he was crying and he barely does even now, because blood has been smeared across his skin. Stark red against pale white.

“Are you bleeding?” Gavin asks, leaning forward, reaching for his palms, looking for cuts. He ignores the pain, trying to find the injury on Connor’s skin.

“No, it’s…” he sighs. “It’s yours.”

Gavin glances back up to him again, heart pounding in his chest.

_Surrender._ Surrender to the anger and see the tears in Connor’s eyes again. Shove him away with screams and profanity and watch as it destroys him.

_No._

“Connor…?”

“I should take you to a hospital. Or get you out of this town before the cops track you down.”

He shakes his head, “No. They won’t call the police.”

“No?”

No. Eddie’s a pedophile. He’ll talk the other patrons in the bar out of it to protect his disgusting little secret. Gavin is safe from that at least.

“And the hospital?”

“They might ask questions.”

Questions that Gavin can’t answer. His ID lists his last name as Reed, he has papers that can get him into and out of Canada, but he can’t risk anything more than he has to. His body will heal without doctors or medicine. It’ll sort itself out. It always has.

And if it doesn’t?

As long as he can hold a gun, as long as he can pull the trigger, as long as he can see his father’s skull shatter and blood coat the walls, does it even fucking matter?

“I’m going to clean you up. I—I have to go to the store. Get some bandages. Are you alright alone?”

He nods, even though he doesn’t want Connor to leave him. Being alone right now is dangerous.

But Connor leaves and the second the door closes he feels everything inside of him fall apart.

He hopes he can stop the tears before Connor comes back. He hopes he doesn’t scream from the pain and wake someone up. He hopes that Connor turns around and sits by his side again, makes do with what they have.

Being alone right now is dangerous, and at least he is in too much pain to move and do anything about it. Cause more pain to even it out. Is that not always the battle he’s fought? Using more pain to try and fix the last? Balance agony with agony?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you believe how blessed i am to have [art of this fic.](https://there-is-not-enough-convin.tumblr.com/post/183576396218/i-told-you-i-want-to-draw-more-art-for-fics) ♥ ♥ ♥


	9. Ignite

**12:07 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Eight**

Connor doesn’t speak while he tends to Gavin’s wounds. Wiping away blood from his face, bandaging a cut on his forehead that looks like it might leave a scar, pressing ice into his hands to soothe the bruises forming on his face.

There’s so much blood. Not all of it belongs to Gavin. Most of it probably doesn’t. He is bruised and broken, but he isn’t bleeding that badly. Not as badly as he could have. He threw most of the punches, until he fell on the floor, until it looked like he gave up and gave in.

So Connor doesn’t speak while he sorts out whether or not blood drenching his clothes belongs to a cut on his arm or not. He doesn’t talk when he forces the shirt over Gavin’s head to look at the damage underneath. He says nothing as his hands move across his chest, wishing that this was under different circumstances. That he wasn’t looking at contusions on ribs telling him that the bone is likely broken underneath.

If he speaks, he might say something he regrets, because he is _angry._

Angry at Gavin. Angry at the man. Angry at all of it. He isn’t even sure if he has a right to be angry. He might’ve done the same thing if he was in Gavin’s position. Hurting someone that hurt him. Hoping to ease the agony a little bit with bruises and cuts.

Gavin’s been hurt. Seriously injured in a way that makes him want to call an ambulance and deal with Gavin hating him later. He knows the complications of a broken rib. He knows that it could damage one of the organs underneath that it’s meant to be protecting.

But he promised. He promised like an idiot.

He can’t very well force Gavin to go to hospital when it could risk his safety. He ran away from his father for a reason. His sister killed herself for a reason. His mother is dead. The Kamski residence is a dangerous place. Gavin needn’t tell him that to understand.

“You’re mad at me.”

He sighs, focuses instead on making another bag of ice to press against his side. There aren’t any pain meds. Gavin might not even be able to fall asleep with the kind of agony he’ll be in.

“Con?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Okay…” he trails off, tries again. “Connor?”

He pauses, closing his eyes, his head aching like he was the one that got punched. Nobody laid a hand on him though, and he feels guilty for the comparison. Gavin, sitting here, unable to move, barely able to breathe, knuckles bandages because of how damaged they became from the fight, and all Connor has is worry and guilt weighing in his chest.

And the problem is he is so absolutely angry at Gavin right now that he really wants to smack him for it. Making him worry like that. Fear for the internal bleeding he might have. He could’ve been killed. In another life, Gavin could be dead right now or in jail because nobody stopped him from beating that man to death.

He gets it. He understands. Connor even agrees that if he was one of the people from Gavin’s past—he _deserves_ it. But—

Losing Gavin? Before he can ever really have him?

It is the most painful thing he can imagine.

So he wants to smack him for it, and he would if Gavin wasn’t already in enough pain.

“Connor?”

“I’m not talking to you,” he says, standing up, organizing all of the tools and gauze on the dresser in front of the television. Setting scissors carefully aside, laying them in neat rows. He already went to the front desk and reserved their room for another three nights. He’s not letting Gavin drive. He’s not letting Gavin sit in the passenger seat and complain about every bump and turn or the press of a seatbelt against ribs that are likely fucking broken.

 _Shit._ He wants to smack him. He wants to kiss him because he is so grateful that he’s at least still here. Maybe he should hug him. Embrace him so tightly that if there was any doubt that he might have a broken bone, it would be put to rest.

“Please?”

Connor doesn’t turn around, doesn’t give into the way he says it. Pitiful and sad and desperate. _Idiot._

“I’d rather you yell at me.”

Of course he would.

“Con? Just say something.”

_Just say something._

“Do you need help getting dressed?” he asks, because it’s the only thing he can trust himself to say without yelling at him, but his voice shakes like he’s on the verge of tears and maybe he is.

“Will it get you to come back over here?”

 _Idiot._ Connor, this time, stupid for bringing it up. Being that close to him. This whole thing is stupid. He should’ve left a few nights ago, before Gavin came back drunk, before he forced this strange connection between them that Connor cannot break.

It’s painful, feeling himself fall in love with someone, feeling himself be pushed away violently every step of the way.

“No,” he decides. “You can do it yourself.”

“Connor, please.”

He reaches forward, carefully adjusts a box in front of him so it lays perfectly parallel with the edge of the dresser.

He lets the silence settle in, lets Gavin’s ragged breath and the vents spitting out hot air be the only noise in the room. His heart feels like it’s beating too fast and there’s nothing he can do to busy his hands, keep them from wanting to shake or curl into fists.

“He deserved it.”

He turns around, slowly, leaning against the dresser, pressing as far back into as he can go, trying to disappear into the furniture, “I know.”

“If you know, then why are you so pissed at me?”

He sighs, gesturing towards Gavin, gesturing towards the shirt laying on the floor with blood smeared across it. The trashcan sitting close by with bloodied tissues used to clean it all up, wrappers from bandages. Even the bag of ice in his hand, held up to the bruise on his face.

“First,” he says, voice shaking. “I don’t care if he deserved it. That doesn’t mean you had to do it.”

“Con—”

“Second, you absolute idiot, you—arrogant piece of utter garbage—” he stops himself, bites his lip, keeps going. “Do you even realize how injured you are right now? Do you even realize how much you—you could have broken a rib. You could have broken your hand. You could have a concussion. You could have—”

“I’ve had worse.”

He brings his hands up, covers his face with them, tries to stop the tears from coming but he can’t.  Connor wipes them away angrily, stepping across the room and sinking down onto the bed next to him, reaching out for his face, holding it gently, wanting to turn this worry into something else. He wants to kiss him. He wants to tell Gavin how sorry he is that he’s ever had to go through something like this.

Connor’s pain and his past made him who he is. That doesn’t mean he deserved it. That doesn’t mean Gavin deserves it. If he could change it, he would. He would change all of it.

“You could have died.”

“I’ve had worse,” Gavin repeats. “It would—”

“Shut up,” he whispers, leaning forward, pressing a kiss against his cheek. “Just stop.”

It hurts. It hurts to know how little Gavin cares about his own life. How little he cares about being harmed by others. Almost like he craves it. Like he would’ve punched someone in that bar to get into a fight whether or not it was someone from his past. It hurts to know this person Connor sees as rather dumbfoundingly amazing despises himself so much. Seeing him in pain is heartbreaking. Seeing him in this much pain and acting like it is nothing, like he wants more, like it would be _blessing_ to die—

It makes him wish he was capable of the words to tell Gavin how much his life in this world matters. Connor could be on the side of the road, dead, dying in the freezing cold if Gavin hadn’t picked him up. He knows that Gavin has a friend that he calls and speaks to, telling them about his trip so far.

There are people that care for him, and even if there wasn’t, that doesn’t mean it would be better if he was dead. He can still be valuable. He can still be worthy of kindness and joy and a _life._

“Con?”

He hates how his heart constricts with the way the nickname sounds. He hates how it makes him press a little closer to Gavin, foreheads touching, lips grazing his cheek. He hates how it makes him want to burrow into Gavin, hold him tightly, never let him go. He hates it because he knows that this will not end well.

“You should just do it.”

“Do what?” he whispers. “Kill you?”

“God, no. Jesus.” Gavin laughs a little, and there’s an arm circling around his waist, fingers grasping the fabric of his shirt.

He’s so warm. Chasing even the tiniest of the cold in the room away. He feels like a fire. Personal heater in this cold season. The perfect person to curl up with, leave kisses on the top of his head, whisper about the things they could do. Build a snowman together with wonky eyes and twig arms. Kissing as the snow falls. Wrapping that scarf around his face again and again until his voice is muffled too much to even tell what kinds of jokes he’s making.

Connor is daydreaming about this. About spending a life with him. Having him beyond a few days.

Such a dangerous thing to do. What if they never see each other again? What if Gavin dies tonight from wounds that Connor can’t treat because he was too much of an idiot to take him to a hospital like he needs?

“I meant… make the bad decision. Make the mistake.”

“You want me to kiss you?”

Gavin nods.

And he almost does it. He leans back, tips up Gavin’s chin, leans forward to finally kiss him. Finally do what he’s been wanting to do since nearly the second he’s met him.

But he doesn’t.

He keeps telling himself that this wouldn’t be a mistake or a bad decision if he cares about Gavin this much. If Gavin cares this much about _him._ But he cycles back to the beginning. Remembers why he framed every flirtation as a joke that Gavin could laugh off.

They won’t meet up again after they part ways. This would be short lived and painful. Even more painful than it already is. It wouldn’t be allowed to mean anything.

Gavin is right. This would be a bad decision. It would be a terrible, terrible mistake.

But it isn’t even just that Connor would never be afforded the life he wants with Gavin—

He just can’t seem to take this from him. He can’t seem to allow himself to move the rest of the way and kiss him. He can’t kiss Gavin. He can’t be another person that takes from him and disappears.

Connor pulls away, shaking his head, whispering, scared to speak, “We’ll never see each other after this, will we?”

Gavin glances up to him and it’s like a smack in the face. Seeing the bruises, seeing the cut on his forehead, the healed scar across his nose, the blood across his jaw that Connor missed when he was cleaning his face.

“No. Probably not.”

“Do you think that means we should do things we’re going to regret?”

“Why not?”

Connor feels like his chest is closed off, lungs not working properly. He doesn’t know why it hurts so much. He doesn’t understand why he feels so close to Gavin when he’s known him for a week. He wishes he didn’t attach himself so easily to people. He wishes he didn’t fall for someone so quickly. They always, always leave. They always, always disappear.

“Maybe I want more than just regret.”

Gavin’s hand twitches at his side, moves to Connor’s hand, grasps it for a moment before letting go.

“I’m not someone that can offer that.”

“I know.”

“Can’t you just take what you can get?”

Connor shakes his head, “Doesn’t work like that, Gavin.”

“Why not?”

He leans forward, places a gentle kiss against Gavin’s forehead. “I don’t want to regret you.”

Connor leaves the bed, feels Gavin’s hands grasping his shirt, letting go quickly, letting _him_ go.

He wishes, maybe, that he had fought a little harder.

 

**4:24 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Eight**

Connor doesn’t sleep. He keeps reaching over, testing to make sure Gavin’s still alive. Listening to ragged breaths or holding his fingers to his wrist, feeling the steady pulse. He lays his hand over Gavin’s heart, lets his chest rise and fall beneath his fingertips.

He doesn’t sleep. He’s terrified when he wakes up, Gavin will be dead. Internal bleeding or an unidentified injury that has run its course. He doesn’t know what to do here. He doesn’t know enough about medicine to help him.

And more importantly, he doesn’t know _how_ to help. He doesn’t know what to do to fix the thoughts and the feelings in Gavin’s head. He doesn’t know how to help heal the vicious nature of his past. He doesn’t know what to do. He feels entirely, stupidly _helpless_.

 

**8:09 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Eight**

“What are you doing?”

“Packing.”

“Stop,” Connor says, slapping his hands away from the bag. “We aren’t going anywhere. Just stop.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? We have to go—”

“We have to stay,” he says, pushing Gavin back towards the bed. “Because someone was an idiot that decided to get into a bar fight and if you refuse to go to the hospital, then you’re at least going to stay put. Do you understand me?”

Gavin takes a step back, feels the bed behind his legs, how easy it would be for Gavin to push him down onto it if he wanted to. Maybe Connor has a point. Maybe it’s because he looks like he’s on the verge of tears that he sighs and gives in.

“How long do you plan on keeping me captive here?”

“Two weeks.”

“Con—”

“I’m paying for the room, so don’t worry your stupid little head about it, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers back, and he takes a step forward, back into Connor’s orbit, let’s the arm rest around his shoulders and pull him close even though it hurts.

Hurts for a myriad of reasons.

Connor is his own personal torturer and all he has to do is exist and be a decent human being. Offer him kindness he hasn’t had in a long, long time. He worries that’s the only reason he likes him so much. He isn’t hurting Gavin in the same violent ways he’s been hurt his entire life.

 

**7:48 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Nine**

“You haven’t called your friend in a while.”

“Tina?” Gavin asks. “How’d you know—”

“I’m observant.”

“Right,” he says quietly. “I can’t talk to her, though.”

“Because you should be in Michigan already?”

“Yeah. I didn’t… tell her about you.”

“I didn’t think so,” Connor says, but he picks up the phone from where it sits on the bedside table charging, pressing it into Gavin’s palm. “Call her. Don’t tell her about me just say… the roads are bad. You don’t want to drive on them when the sun goes down.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because she’s your friend, and you two obviously care very much for each other. She deserves to at least speak to you. You haven’t called her in—”

“I mean why do you care about _me_?”

“I don’t know,” Connor says, but it’s a lie.

Vaguely.

He can’t place the specifics of why he so heavily gravitates towards Gavin. He can’t explain why he wants to be by his side, to help him. Why he wants, even when he reaches Michigan, to just stay with Gavin a little longer. Be able to wake up every day and know that he could see or talk to Gavin again.

But he can say why he’s still here, too. Why he never left. When he got in the car with Gavin, he thought it would be one night and they’d never see each other again. Something about him would push him out of the vehicle and into another. He didn’t expect to stay here. He didn’t expect to have generosity extended to him the way Gavin treats him.

He didn’t expect to laugh and be able to easily make jokes he would have kept quiet about with other people. There is a connection. They click. They fit together in a way they likely shouldn’t.

Maybe he is just lonely. Tired of being by himself.

He likes him. He cares about him. But it is difficult to explain _why_. Is anyone ever really capable of getting the exact words to explain why they fell in love with the person they’re with?

“Call her,” he says quietly. “I’ll leave you alone.”

Gavin nods, watches Connor as he disappears out the door. When he reaches the other side, he leans back against the surface, closes his eyes and forces himself to exhale.

 

**7:55 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Nine**

“Hi.”

“Go fuck yourself, Gavin.”

“Tina—”

“I called you fifty times yesterday and you didn’t answer once. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I thought you died.”

“I know.”

“You could’ve just texted me and told me you were alive and I wouldn’t have spent the last three nights wondering if you—”

She stops herself, but he knows exactly where she’s headed with that sentence. The last time they talked, he was crying, calling her in the middle of the night, asking her to help him out of a bad place.

He hasn’t called her. It doesn’t surprise him at all that she might assume he killed himself.

“Not yet,” he says. “Not dead yet.”

Still painfully alive.

“You’re an ass,” she whispers. “But I’m happy you’re not dying in a ditch somewhere, you piece of shit.”

“Thanks,” he says, and he means it, he’s smiling, holding back laughing because it hurts too much. “Do you want to hear about the last few days or not?”

“I do.”

“Okay.”

So he tells her.

He tells her the made up version.

The version that Connor offered him. The one where the roads and the blizzards are too bad to drive very far. The one where he’s stopped early in the days because he’s scared of crashing. The one that, minorly adjusted, is something Tina might believe. His phone wasn’t charging properly, he didn’t want to waste battery in case he needed to dial an emergency number.

He can’t tell if she buys it. She doesn’t argue against it, and that’s all he really needs. Something to placate her until the truth is ready to come out, if it ever is.

 

**9:40 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Ten**

Connor isn’t the type of person to watch very much television. There are very few that gain his attention, and, mostly, he leans towards crime shows. Real life mysteries being solved. Learning different things about killers and their motives. He understands what Gavin meant though, the night he told him to shut it off. Even if it was for personal reasons. Even if it was because it was _his_ family being turned into entertainment.

There is something a little _terrifying_ about how many shows like these exist. How many of them utilize dead children and women for views and money. He likes them in a way he doesn’t know how to explain, but he has always felt a little bit guilty for watching. Someone else’s death used like as a way to learn.

Gavin flips through the channels nearly nonstop, cycling through five times before settling on a show. Usually the cooking channel. Watching people put together dishes with strange ingredients, racing around fake grocery stores, carefully decorating fancy wedding cakes.

There is little for him to do when he’s trying not to move. Sometimes he hands the remote to Connor, tells him to find something to watch. Stopping on shows about hoarders or houses that cost half a million dollars he’d love to have just to fill with books and plants and little else.

Maybe a dog. Maybe a cat, too.

Maybe a boy with a scar across his nose.

This is how they spend most of their day, though. Television on, shows playing in the background. Occasionally Gavin falls asleep during them. He sleeps on and off, jolts awake with a breath and a groan. So much pain and so little Connor can do for him. Ibuprofen isn’t going to do enough to help him.

So they watch television to help dull the silence of the room. It does whatever it can to distract Gavin from the pain. It keeps Connor away from him, on the floor, not looking, not moving closer. Focusing on the people on screen making meal after meal to impress judges and win money they desperately need.

**2:29 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Ten**

Gavin is asleep and Connor moves like a parent afraid to wake up a sleeping baby. He heads to the bathroom, flicking the light on and settling down inside of the tub, book resting against his knees as he turns the pages, trying to focus on what he’s reading.

He brought two books with him on this trip, even though he knew it wouldn’t be enough even if he could have stayed on the bus the entire time. He needed something to do when he stopped for the night and needed words to help calm his thoughts. He needed something to busy himself with instead of focusing on the car underneath his feet, the press of people around him.

Connor has always been a lover of words, even if they often fail him. He can dissect other’s speech. He can take it apart and turn it into something he’ll understand. How sometimes people will say things about themselves without realizing it, or even saying things in a way that they hope nobody will realize the depths of their words.

He struggles to find proper ways to explain things about himself, but he can find comfort in fictional characters. Writers that are able to give their world problems, always with the hope of a happy ending.

Happy endings don’t always exist in real life, but between the pages of books, they do. More often than not the bad guy is caught. The girl is able to recover. The couple get their dramatic kiss in the rain. Everything is happy.

He turns the page, hand pressed to his eyes, brushing away tears. He has no idea why he’s crying. He doesn’t know why sometimes, when he opens up a book, it will make him cry for somebody that doesn’t exist. Why he can care so deeply for letters printed neatly on a page. He doesn’t know why, in other books on other days, he can’t seem to care at all for people so carefully composed by the authors.

This one—

This is a little too much to handle sometimes.

 

**6:21 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Ten**

It’s strange, being alone. Connor leaves to get food, leaving the motel room empty and quiet. He still doesn’t like it. Connor’s changed him in that tiny way. Little over a week and he has wheedled his way into the back of Gavin’s head, shifted his thoughts.

When he started this trip, he wanted to get to Michigan as soon as possible. End everything before his nerves got to him and made him second guess it all. The anger that his mother is dead, that his father got away with killing her just like he got away with killing his sister, with all of the abuse and trauma—

It was enough to carry him. It’s never going to expire, but it might subside. The edge might disappear. He might lose this ability to take a life without a second thought.

But Connor—

Connor shows up, changes his plans, forces him to slow down. Showing him generosity. Showing him that there are kind people out there. And if there is—

Maybe there is a reason to go back to a cat and a girl, to hold out for a boy that might love him, to hope for a future.

He just can’t reasonably allow himself that when his father is alive.

Before he wanted to be alone. Before he wanted nothing but the silence and the snow with him on his trip. And now he can’t stand the quiet. He can’t stand being alone because it feels like everything inside of him is decaying when he thought there was nothing left to die.

 

**11:50 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Eleven**

“What are you reading?”

Connor lifts the book up, shows Gavin the cover. Nearly all white, black outlines of a girl, red jacket hanging loosely around her arms.

“What’s it about?”

“Are you asking seriously, or are you just bored?”

Gavin smiles, “Can’t it be both?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Connor sits up, setting the book down. Almost a third of the way through. “It’s about a girl seeking revenge.”

“Oh? Have you read it before?”

“No.”

“Do you like it so far?”

“Yes, but it’s painful to read.”

Gavin nods, slowly, “Can you…”

“Read it to you?” he asks. “You really are bored.”

Gavin gestures towards the blackened screen of the television, “There’s not much to do when there’s nothing left to watch.”

“Are you going to ask questions every other paragraph to understand what’s happening?”

“Maybe, but I’ll try not to.”

“Fine,” Connor says, but he looks almost a little annoyed by this. “I’ll read to you.”

And so he does.

_“…she'd just come home flush from a crush on Jonah Sweeten and asked me how you know when you like someone, and if I liked any boys like she did, and I didn't know what to tell her. That I tried not to think about that kind of stuff, because it was painful, because I thought I could never have it, but when I did end up liking someone, it always made me ache right down to my core. I realized pretty early on that the who didn't really matter so much. That anybody who listens to me, I end up loving them just a little…”_

 

**8:14 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Eleven**

Connor has to help him walk to and from the bathroom. It doesn’t bother him. He used to care for Hank like a nurse. Take him to the bathtub, turn on the water, help him wash away the alcohol and regrets. Gavin is like him. Stubborn. They’re more similar than he thought at first. It’s easy to group two people together by their cruelty, but Connor feels like, in a time like this, helping pull the shirt up over Gavin’s head, helping to turn the water on, that maybe they would’ve gotten along.

He’ll never know. Gavin will never meet him.

**5:46 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Twelve**

He’s scared. Terrified. Terrified of Tina finding out the truth like he knows she will. She will be having a normal day, caring for Latte, doing her work, going about her business. And then the next, she’ll receive the call. Listen to the voicemail Gavin plans on leaving her, telling her how sorry he is that this is how things turned out. Let her discover on the news what really happened. Long lost Kamski son comes back to murder father in revenge killing. Long headline. Might need to be shrunk down to size.

She might drop the phone in the shock of it, she might cry when she reads the news and sees that it’s the truth. She might hate him. She probably _will_ hate him.

But he’ll do it anyways. He will tell her how sorry he is, but also how thankful he is. All those nights, all those weeks and years they knew each other. She was an anchor to this world. Helping him along. Helping him gain little slices of reasons to live. Maybe not reasons to live. Maybe just reasons not to die.

It will be painful and awful for her to see him locked up. It will be painful for her to get the truth.

He is terrified of it. He feels an overwhelming amount of guilt already at the thought that this will break them. She won’t come to visit. She lives too far away. Even if he was imprisoned somewhere closer—

He’s lost her. He has already lost her.

He loses everyone.

 

**8:56 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Twelve**

“Can I ask you a personal question, Gavin?”

“How personal?”

Connor moves a little closer on the bed, shifting, biting his lip, avoiding eye contact. “About your past.”

“How far back?”

“Twenty years.”

_Twenty years._

“Do I have the right to refuse to answer?”

“Yes, of course. You always do. You aren’t obligated to tell me anything, Gavin.”

“Okay,” he says, despite knowing that even just the question will be harmful to hear. “Go for it.”

“What happened… the night you… faked your death?”

 _Faked his death._ As if he planned it.

“The house caught on fire,” he says. “I took my chance and ran.”

“Gavin…”

“You want more information than that?” he asks, looking up, meeting Connor’s eyes. “Read my biography when it comes out in two years.”

Connor tilts his head, his expression softening somehow even further in the way that says _please_ without ever voicing the words. _Please_ give him the information he needs to understand. _Please_ give him facts that he can dissect. _Please_ give him material to consume himself with. Little details to get closer to Gavin, to know him better.

He sighs.

“Fine. I’ll tell you.”

 

**10:32 P.M.**

Twenty years ago, there was a boy named Gavin Kamski. He hated his life. He hated his family. He hated absolutely everything, and he didn’t even realize how much more terrible it could get.

One night, his mother and his father dressed up in fancy clothes to head off to their fancy party where they would talk to other fancy rich people, laugh at jokes made at the expense of the less privileged, think about how grateful they are that they live in a house with seven bedrooms instead of two, that their bathrooms are cleaned by maids instead of by them.

No one else knows that at home, his mother is cowering in the corner, his children are being abused. Nobody knows anything. Even if the news reports say that something happened to the little girl. Nobody would accuse the father. Not when it looks like he’s grieving so terribly. Who’s to say the reports are true, anyways? News articles makes up plenty of fake details to harm the rich, don’t they?

Sides, isn’t the father so handsome? He could never do such a thing to a little girl. Look at how he looks at his wife, how his wife looks at him. Isn’t that love, not fear in her eyes?

Twenty years ago, there was a boy named Gavin Kamski. His brother was out of the house. Left to go visit friends at a movie theater, go out to the bar afterwards with their fake IDs. Everyone recognized Elijah’s face, but it hardly mattered. He was rich. He could do whatever he liked. Pass a thousand bucks under the table to pretend he was twenty-one instead of sixteen.

Gavin stayed at home, wandering through the empty halls, looking at the fireplace where his sister’s suicide note was burned. The only thing that ever has her words written on them explaining what happened to her. Gone. Turned to ashes.

The whole place should be turned to ashes.

So he set it on fire. Gas from the station down the street poured on every wall and floor he could. Lit a match, dropped it to the floor.

He could turn to ash, too.

 

**9:10 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Twelve**

He doesn’t tell Connor all the right details. He doesn’t say that he set the house on fire himself. He pretends it was an accident, even though it contradicts the news reports, even though he knows Connor can tell he’s lying.

“And the burns?”

Gavin moves, as if he can protect them, but it hurts to try and cover them, to try and shield them from Connor’s prying eyes as if a shirt and a blanket doesn’t cover him already.

“I got out of the house, and then I remembered the dog. So I ran back to save her.”

An easy, practiced lie.

“How did you… burns are very… difficult to manage sometimes. Especially when they cover that much of your body. The debridement process… bandaging it… They can be very painful.”

He shrugs, “What do you want me to say?”

“The truth.”

He sighs. “I met someone and they helped me.”

“They never took you to the hospital?”

“No.”

“They never even asked who you were, or even recognized you?”

“No. I wasn’t—My brother and my dad they—they were the ones always getting their pictures taken. Eli was the oldest. He was… the child people liked best. And then it was my sister, because she was dead. People were always interested in dead little girls. They find them so interesting.”

How could a thirteen year old girl kill herself? Easy, when she had a father like that.

“Gavin… why are you going back to Detroit now?”

He doesn’t want to answer this. He can lie to Connor, but it isn’t as if he _wants_ to. Very little in his life cares about what he wants, though.

“My mother is dead. I want to see her grave and say goodbye.”

“And then you’re coming back to Alaska?”

“Yes.”

He can’t tell if Connor believes him.

It doesn’t matter if he does, though, Connor isn’t going to stop him.

“Are you going to see your brother, while you’re there?”

“No. I don’t trust him.” He’s too close to their father. Eli might be just as damaged as Gavin was, as their sister was, but it isn’t as if they can really, truly, trust one another. The bond between them has always been built on not saying anything to one another, never clarifying the abuse they each individually faced.

Gavin saw what happened to his sister and pretended he didn’t.

Elijah saw what happened to Gavin and pretended he didn’t.

It was a vicious, awful cycle.

“I’m sorry this happened to you, Gavin.”

He should say he isn’t. That it makes him who he is. Maybe he should pretend that’s the truth. That somehow, someway, he should be grateful that he is who he is now. But who he is—

Gavin is terrible. He’s a monster. He’s hateful and angry and violent. He’s brutal and uncaring. He’s cruel. He’s so pissed off he struggles with not destroying something every second he thinks about his past for more than a few minutes.

Who he is is the worst possible person he could ever be. Running to Michigan twenty years later to kill his father? Becoming a murderer? Not even caring, not even thinking anything other than the fact his father deserves so much worse than just a bullet to the head?

He can’t even be thankful that somehow he met Connor this way, met Tina, adopted Latte. He can’t even allow himself to feel happy that there are two people in his life that care for him, because he’s leaving them behind.

Sides—

Two people hardly make up for the dozens that have harmed him.

So he is sorry, too. Because in another lifetime, in another universe, maybe he could’ve been softer. Maybe he could have found Connor anyways and been able to kiss him without any guilt. Maybe he could have been able to have sex without feeling the strings attached to him, threatening to cut him clean apart.

“I told you,” he whispers. “I’ve been in worse pain.”

And Connor barely even knows a little bit of it.

The drunk version of him wanted to scare Connor away. Spill all the details. Let him know how broken he is by destroying the possibility of the two of them ever existing. He couldn’t do that with Tina. He couldn’t do that with his boyfriend. He told them pieces, but never as much as Connor. He waited for them to leave him first.

But Connor?

He knows if Connor ever got close enough to leave him, it would destroy whatever little bit he has left of himself. So he pushes instead.

And somehow, someway, Connor doesn’t care. He crawls across the bed, lays down beside Gavin, arm resting over his waist, face pressed into his side. It hurts. It hurts, but it’s nice, too.

Connor not letting him push him away, holding on instead.

It hurts to have someone care about him. He isn’t used to it. He is like a fragile baby again, not knowing how to build walls. Watching whatever he has managed to built crumble around him.

He hates it.

He thinks, though, that he might love Connor.

At least, he could.

 

**10:26 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Twelve**

“And you, Connor?” he asks. “What happened to you?”

_Too much to tell._


	10. Thaw

**10:26 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Twelve**

What is Connor meant to say? Is he meant to spill every secret of his past to Gavin right here, right now? Is he meant to let him know everything as an act of gratitude and balance that Gavin told him his trauma?

Maybe he should.

It is only fair.

But when he opens his mouth to speak, no words come out. It’s been thirty years and he still can’t say those four words out loud.

_My brother is dead._

Deceased, drowned, desperate—

Desperately screaming, desperately yanking at his seatbelt, desperately pounding against the glass.

“Orphan,” he manages instead.

_Alone,_ he thinks.

“Did you like your parents?” Gavin asks.

And it’s difficult to say yes. It’s difficult to say out loud that he had a good relationship with his mother—that he never really knew his father. Dead a few months after he was adopted. Never met him, but he looked at the pictures of him. Handsome man. So happy with his wife.

“Me and my mother were close,” he decides. “I don’t… It’s been a while.”

Gavin nods. He understands, Connor guesses. To an extent. Maybe he wasn’t close with his mother, but she’s still dead. His sister is dead. He would understand the loss of a sibling and a parent. But that doesn’t make it easy to talk about. He has kept his brother secret. Hidden away. Locked up like a problem child, pretending he never existed.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

Connor smiles, just a little bit, “How personal?”

“About your past,” Gavin whispers.

_How far back? Twenty years? Thirty?_

“Y-Yes,” he mumbles.

“In the car, when we were might have crashed…” he trails off, eyes moving away from Connor’s face to the wrinkles in the blanket. “Anyone would’ve been scared. But you—You were in a car crash before, weren’t you?”

He considers lying. It wouldn’t be difficult. He’s not especially good at lying, but it isn’t as if Gavin would call him out if he said no. Except he doesn’t _want_ to lie to Gavin. Not because he thinks he owes Gavin details about his past, just that—

He trusts him with it. Like Gavin trusted Connor with his. Little secrets passed between strangers. What would they ever do with them? Like anyone would believe Connor if he went to the press and told them that Gavin Kamski was alive. As if he would. Hearing his history, knowing the details of the cases—

Nobody that had even the lowest level of human decency would turn Gavin into the police. After all he’s been through? He doesn’t deserve it.

So Connor tells him as little as he can.

Yes, he was in a car crash.

He was a child.

Water doesn’t terrify him anymore. Cars don’t terrify him anymore. But it doesn’t stop him from thinking about the worst-case scenarios. Walking over bridges and looking out at the water below. Seeing a street crowded with cars and how easy it would be for one of them to lose control.

He’s fine now. He’s perfectly fine.

It’s in the past.

_I’m sorry that happened to you._

So is he.

 

**2:16 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Thirteen**

“Con?” he asks quietly, a little bit scared, voice seemingly so loud in the dark.

“Yes?”

“Can you…” he sighs, trying to force the words he’s practiced again and again out of his mouth. “Can you just… I don’t… want to be alone.”

“Oh.”

It’s quiet. A shuffling of feet, the movement of the mattress underneath him. It’s hard sleeping sitting up. Not comfortable at all, but it decreases the pain inside of his chest. It helps. It helps sitting up and it helps having Connor on the bed beside him.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Gavin bites his lip, “Making you worry.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t turn the television off.”

He laughs and then feels Connor’s hand touch his stomach, like he’s trying to still it. Pressing his palm against his abdomen like a shield against the pain. It seems like such a silly thing to apologize for. Not changing the channel, not turning it off. It’s just a television.

But he knows by Connor’s touch how serious he actually is.

“Don’t be,” he whispers. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“You shouldn’t downplay it,” Connor whispers back. He moves a little closer, his face pressed into Gavin’s side.

And he doesn’t know how they can be like this. So close and yet so far. Connor is holding onto him, cuddling against him, pressed so tight that if he closed his eyes and wanted to pretend, he could imagine a life where he could have a boyfriend or a husband.

They haven’t even kissed.

But Connor is right.

He shouldn’t downplay it, but he doesn’t want to make Connor feel guilty. How could he know that it would send him into such a downward spiral? How could he know that all it would take is two seconds of seeing his sister’s face and he’d suddenly be back to his sixteen-year-old self, somehow simultaneously trying to find a way to end his life and survive?

He survived. He chose that.

He can’t tell if he’s _still_ choosing that. If giving into his anger and killing his father, accepting a life in prison, could be considered a form of suicide. He is objectively ending his life in a way. Cutting himself off from ever having a future. He’s killing himself, isn’t he?

Does it matter? He survived thirty-six years, isn’t that good enough?

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says, his voice hoarse like it hasn’t been used in years. “That I can’t give you more.” _That this would be a mistake._

He feels Connor’s face nuzzle closer into his side and it hurts for a variety of reasons, none of which he wants to pin down into specifics. That would make it hurt even worse. Salt in an open wound.

“Me too,” he whispers.

 

**5:54 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Thirteen**

“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” Connor asks through the door, leaning against it, waiting.

“I don’t want your help,” Gavin replies, like he did yesterday and the day before and the day before that—

“But you need it.”

“I don’t _need_ it. You’re just trying to get me naked, so back off.”

Maybe he is. He can’t entirely tell anymore. Although it’s difficult to joke about. Gavin utilizes humor to make things a little bit easier to handle. But Connor—

He retreats. Shuts down instead. Feels his entire body close itself off. Not like Hank, and not like Gavin. He’s never spent a day laying in bed wanting to not exist for a while. He understands it, though. He’s had mornings where it’s been difficult to get up, but he always did in the end. He always forced himself to act like a human being instead of a ghost.

“You could fall and hurt yourself,” he says instead. “And if you do, I’m taking you to the hospital. I won’t let you die.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m serious, Gavin,” he says, his voice a little louder through the door. “If you die, I’ll have to kill you.”

“You can’t kill a corpse.”

“I’ll bring you back from the dead and kill you again.”

“You promise?”

“Yes,” he says, with a little smile. “I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that, then.”

 

**3:07 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Fourteen**

Gavin doesn’t ask, but Connor lays down on the bed beside him again anyways. Arm draped over his waist, legs overlapping his. Taking as much of him as he can get. He wants more, and this is killing him. He told himself he wouldn’t let this happen. That he wouldn’t grab what he could and pretend it was enough.

It will never be enough.

But it’s difficult not to get as close as possible, to apologize for the pain he causes when he holds Gavin a little too closely.

_More,_ he wants to whisper.

And he’d probably ask for it if Gavin wasn’t injured, if he didn’t feel guilty for being in that bar, for Gavin following him there.

If he wasn’t injured like this, though, maybe he wouldn’t realize how low he would set the bar. If they were sitting side by side in the car, he wouldn’t be giving into this need. He’d let it pass him by. He’d picture water and fish outside the glass instead of holding Gavin’s hand. A good distraction. He needs it.

He should back away. Hide in the bathtub like Gavin had that one night, like he had when he wanted to read and Gavin was asleep. Keep away from the temptation of a boy he isn’t allowed to have.

He always thought, when he was younger, there would be the possibility of being denied someone he loves. Being like him, being so able and eager to fall in love, to please others, liking boys and girls—

There was always so much possibility that he would fall for a boy. That the world would hate him for it. When he was a kid, he held out the hope that it would be a girl. A girl would swoop in with long hair and pretty eyes and would grant him the life he was meant to have. He’d never have to deal with stares when he held a boy’s hand because it would be her’s instead. He’d never have to explain he was married to a boy, because it would be this perfect angelic girl instead.

He fell in love with the concept of never having to deal with a world hating anything different. He held out for it until he met Markus. Denied himself every boy that crossed his path. And after Markus?

Nothing. No one. He couldn’t get hurt like that again. He couldn’t fall in love with someone, _anyone_ that would leave him behind for someone else. He didn’t want to be second-best. He just wanted normalcy.

And now there’s Gavin, as wrong as it could ever possibly be.

 

**9:29 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Fourteen**

He tries not to make Gavin laugh, but it’s difficult watching days pass by where he looks absolutely miserable. It hurts for him to laugh. Connor can see it written across his face, even if he didn’t immediately toss back a joke about how Connor is trying to kill him. He is always trying to weigh the options, decide whether or not Gavin should be happy and in pain or—

Nothing.

Numb?

Not exactly. He’s still in pain otherwise.

There is little he can do to help.

 

**11:42 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Fourteen**

“You look tired.”

Connor sits up, hands coming up to his eyes, rubbing away the sleep. Gavin thinks he might’ve drifted off there, in the middle of his sentence. The words grew quieter and quieter until he was silent, lips unmoving, eyes glazed over. If anyone is capable of sleeping with their eyes open, Connor seems like the type.

“I’m fine,” he mumbles. “Let’s finish the chapter, alright?”

“Just go to bed.”

“I can make coffee,” he says, closing the book suddenly, like the noise of the cover snapping closed would wake him up. “I’ll be fine.”

“Con, just get some rest.”

“Told you not to call me that.”

“Yeah?” he asks. “You want me to call you Pro instead?”

Connor rolls his eyes, leaning back against the chair, “I’m not tired.”

“You fell asleep in the middle of reading. I’m not a child. You don’t need to stay up and take care of me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Please get some sleep.”

“You’ll wake me if you need anything?”

“Of course I will.”

He doesn’t really care if Connor believes him, and he’s pretty sure Connor doesn’t, but he seems to accept it. Getting ready for bed in slow movements, like moving too quickly spends too much energy he doesn’t have access too.

He lays beside Gavin, further away than he has the last few nights, but with his hand stretched out, taking Gavin’s fingers in his, holding them lightly like they’re a bomb set to detonate.

“What?”

“I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

“How big of a mistake it would actually be.”

He thinks about it for a moment. Connor kissing him. How nice it would be to finally have it. But he can see the pain on Connor’s face, and he knows. Abandoning him after stealing this from him would be too much.

“Pretty massive.”

“Yeah?”

He nods when Connor looks up at him, and he knows he can’t explain every reason why they can’t have more. He can’t tell him that he plans on killing someone. He doesn’t care if the fact would ruin them forever, they already have no future, but he can’t have someone like Connor trying to talk him out of it, calling the police to stop him—

But there are other things he can say, too.

“I’m not… fixable,” he says. “You can’t repair me.”

_Unstable._ It wouldn’t last, even if they could have it. Connor would get tired of how often Gavin breaks down. He should be tired of it already. He should hate it. How many times has Gavin cried in the span of two weeks? How many times has Connor been there to hold him and try and help him through it when there is never any hope of being okay?

“You’re not a hopeless cause, Gavin.”

“And you’re not meant to fix me, Connor.”

But he wants to. Gavin can see that. Connor watches their fingers lace together, his thumb making circles over the back of Gavin’s hand. He wants to fix him—or at least see him happy. He should know better by now. Gavin isn’t afforded happiness. It’s too expensive and too rare of a thing. It’s not in his budget, not in his plans, not even on his wish list anymore. He’s let it go. He’s passed it along. It’s just a dream now, occasionally. Not even a dream, really. A nightmare haunting him.

“Get some sleep, Con.”

He nods, eyes still stuck on the way their hands fit together. _Perfect,_ Gavin thinks. Pale white, uncalloused next to scarred up and tanned. Opposite, but they fit together perfectly.

Gavin doesn’t believe in soulmates. He doesn’t believe in fate. He doesn’t believe that something has brought them together. But their hands fit together perfectly, and Connor hasn’t stopped fighting for this.

And maybe that’s all he really wanted.

Somebody to fight _for_ him. Somebody to fight for _him._

_Somebody._

 

**6:11 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Fifteen**

He dreams of the fire but it isn’t necessarily like it was in real life. It isn’t the fire that burned his body. It isn’t the flames that nearly killed him. It’s hands he doesn’t want scorching his skin, leaving behind scars that will never heal. It’s a hand around his throat crushing the air out of his lungs, the glass slicing his nose.

He can hear someone saying his name, pleading, hands on his body. Soft and gentle, careful, cautious—

Connor’s.

He opens his eyes, looks in the dark room at him.

Hands on his body—

On his shoulders, moving to his face. Worried expression, head tilted to the side, concern like a weight pulling him down.

“Bad dream,” he mumbles, but he feels smoke in his lungs, wanting to come out. A release of tears he can’t allow. Not again. Connor can not see him cry again. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

Connor shakes his head, even though Gavin can tell there are words on his lips that he’s not voicing. A thousand things he could say right now, shoving them aside for kisses pressed to his face. Never to his lips. Forehead, temple, cheek, nose. The most he’ll allow himself. They aren’t considered mistakes. They should be.

Little tiny mistakes.

“I’m fine,” he whispers, trying to pry Connor’s hands from his face. And then Connor takes his fingers in his, pulls them to his lips, pressing kisses against his knuckles, against his palm.

“You worry me,” he breathes.

“I’m _fine.”_

“You were screaming.”

He shakes his head. _No,_ he wasn’t. He doesn’t. He never does. But Connor is right. He can feel it now. The hoarseness in his throat, as if it’s been shredded to pieces.

It’s not difficult to understand why Connor is more shaken than him. He’s used to the nightmares. He lived it.

So when Connor leans forward, when he presses his weight against Gavin’s chest and makes the pain spark up into complete agony, he lets him. He’s fine. The nerves in his stomach are dwindling down. He’s fine. He’ll be okay. He’s always okay. He’s still alive, isn’t he?

 

**1:36 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Fifteen**

“I never see you call anybody,” Gavin says, and it makes Connor’s heart sink in his chest, straight to his feet, through the floorboards.

“No. I don’t have many friends,” he says. The truth. Partially.

“You said you were going to visit your brother, though, didn’t you?” he asks. “You don’t call him? Tell him you’re late?”

He shakes his head, pulls his legs up to his chest. He wants to curl up in on himself. Die before he has to speak about his family. It’s too difficult. Not in the same way that Gavin’s is but—

Not easy.

“When is he expecting you?”

“He’s… not,” Connor says quietly. “He doesn’t know I’m coming.”

“Con,” he says, leaning forward, face twisting in pain at the movement, prying one of Connor’s hands from his knees, holding it in his. All that pain just to hold his hand. “Talk to me.”

_Talk to me._

“We don’t know each other,” he says, staring at their hands. Amazed at how well they fit together. Always. Like they were made to go together. “I… can’t. I’m sorry.”

He’s afraid with the words that Gavin will let him go, but he doesn’t. He holds on tighter. A silent urging, a quiet pleading. _Talk to me._

There’s too much to talk about.

So easy to expect Gavin to open up, so difficult to do it himself. Who cares about his feelings? Who cares about all the stupidity locked inside of his head? So much easier to help others. Take care of them instead. Make him feel like he’s wanted instead of another person that people can leave behind.

“He’s dead,” Connor whispers. “Okay?”

The words are so difficult to force out, but he manages.

Maybe because they’re a lie.

“Con—”

“It was a long time ago,” he says. “I’m okay now.”

_Lie, lie, liar._

_Liar._

_All you do is lie._

Isn’t that what Hank screamed at him? Days before everything fell apart? _Liar, liar, liar._

All he does is lie.

 

**7:15 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Sixteen**

“I’m proud of you,” Connor says, and for a moment Gavin thinks he’s joking, but it’s easy to realize how serious he is. The way he smiles, the way he looks over at him.

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“You haven’t complained once about not being able to smoke. Unless you’re secretly sneaking cigarettes in the bathroom?”

“Oh, that?” he sighs, looking towards the ceiling. “I’ll just start back up again.”

“Not if I throw them away.”

“I’ll buy new ones.”

“Not if I steal your wallet.”

“I’ll rob the store.”

“Not if I have you arrested.”

“You really going through all those lengths just to keep me from smoking?” he asks, looking back to him.

“It’s bad for you,” Connor replies, idly turning a page in his book. “Maybe worse than a broken rib.”

“I don’t think it’s broken. Just bruised.”

“Fine,” he says. “Worse than a bruised rib.”

_Worse than a bruised rib._ Maybe. He’s not going to argue with Connor. It’s best to let him win, sometimes. Better than hearing every argument he can think of, even though it’s amusing. He’s too tired to joke sometimes. The pain doesn’t let him sleep. Connor laying beside him helps and hurts. He’s stuck in purgatory. Getting snatches of an hour here, another two there. Never enough.

At least, on the bright side, he is too focused on how much his ribs hurt to think about how much he wants to smoke. Little victories.

“You’d really have me arrested for trying to steal cigarettes?”

“Yes.”

He smiles, feels the need to hide it. _How sweet,_ he wants to say, but he knows he won’t be able to manage it sarcastically enough for Connor to believe he doesn’t mean it.

 

**2:13 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Seventeen**

“Gavin?” he whispers, scared to wake him even though he knows Gavin isn’t asleep.

“What?”

“My brother is dead.”

“Con, you told me that—”

“My other brother isn’t. I have—I’m—We’re triplets.”

“Triplets?”

“Twins now,” he says, like he’s practiced his entire life. He hasn’t said the word _triplet_ out loud since was eight years old, since the other kids on the playground got tired of hearing him adamantly say that there used to be a third, that they use to be a trio. Once upon a time, the three of them were the rowdy boys that annoyed their mother until she wasn’t looking at the road and instead looking at them, trying to break them apart from their fight over a toy.

Once upon a time, other kids used to make him cry during recess because they kept telling him he was lying. There was only two. Only ever the two of them. Connor and Nines.

_Nines,_ because he never spoke more than nine words.

Children think they’re so clever.

He had to get the pictures down, listen to his mother confirm that there was three of them once. He relived it over and over again. _You had another brother. Triplets, Connor. You were a set of three._ But the pain was necessary. He was always so terrified he made up that third boy. He needed to see his face, look at the pain it caused his mother to speak his name, look at the way Nines silenced himself.

Three rowdy boys that took away the attention of the driver because a toy was more important than seatbelts and safety.

_Nines_ stopped talking.

_Connor_ started crying.

_S—_

Dead at six.

“You’re not visiting your brother’s grave, are you?”

“No,” he whispers. “I’m not.”

“What are you doing, then, Connor? If he doesn’t know you’re coming?”

And he has to lie, because he doesn’t know how to tell the truth right now. He has no idea how to put the reality of his situation into words. _Connor_ doesn’t even understand what he’s doing anymore. He doesn’t understand anything.

“He won’t talk to me,” he says, and that much is true. “He won’t message me. I just want to see him. I miss him. Gavin, I—I just need to _see him.”_

It surprises him so much his body freezes, the tears forming in his eyes come to a halt.

Gavin kissed him.

On the cheek, but still—

_Gavin_ kissed _him_.

He reaches out in the dark, finding Gavin’s face, running his hands along his jaw, leaning forward, resting their foreheads together. He can’t kiss him. But he wants to.

God, does he want to.

“Do you want to—”

“No mistakes,” Connor whispers, leaning away again. “Remember?”

“I think we’ve made a lot of mistakes already, Connor.”

_What’s one more?_

He doesn’t know, and that’s what irritates him the most. Like they aren’t already acting like a couple. Cuddling at night time, sharing their past, trusting each other. How many times has Connor left kisses against Gavin’s forehead? How many times have they held hands?

What is a kiss, among all of that?

_Reality._

A mistake. A bad decision. The crossing of a line into territory they can’t undo. Right now, they can pretend everything else was just being overly affectionate friends. It means nothing. Hugs and cheek kisses are comfort.

But kissing—

That’s something else.

It’s an admission, it’s a betrayal.

Connor wants more. Gavin refuses to give it to him. They will go their separate ways. Connor will let his fingers grace his lips and wish and plead that he could have had Gavin. He might regret not even having this one tiny thing.

He doesn’t know what to do here. It all made sense before and now it doesn’t. Everything is just a tangle of emotions he can’t unwind. He’s lost. He wants Gavin to help him. Reach out and pull him into the light.

_What is a kiss, among all of this?_

_What’s one more mistake?_

“You’re not the only one that’s broken,” he says quietly. “You’re not the only one that can’t be fixed.”

There’s a hand on his waist, slipping underneath the fabric of his shirt, touching skin that hasn’t been seen by another person since Markus. It makes him shiver, makes him feel like he’s on fire and frozen solid at the same time.

“You’re not hopeless, Connor.”

Maybe not.

But he doesn’t know what is happening anymore.

He hates himself for it. Refusing to indulge in something he wants so badly. But he does. He pulls away from Gavin, instantly feeling terrible, like guilt has formed into a solid rock within his chest. He whispers apologies as he leaves the bed, as he stumbles away towards the far wall, sinking down in the chair, curling up as small as he can go.

_I’m sorry._

He is—

Not a liar.

Just terrified.

Terrified of losing someone else he cares about.

 

**10:32 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Seventeen**

“You’re going to hurt yourself—”

“Fuck if I care, get back here,” he says, grasping Connor’s shirt, tugging him back to the bed. It does hurt, but he ignores it, leans over Connor and presses a kiss against his jaw. He doesn’t remember what led them to this, to his hands moving underneath Connor’s shirt, to moving along his sides and listening to the laughter burst from his lips.

It’s too late at night for this. They’ll wake someone up.

But fuck, he really doesn’t care. Making Connor laugh, whether it’s at five in the morning or noon or eleven at night—

He loves the sound of him laughing, he loves the smile on his face.

“S-Stop,” he says. “I can’t breathe.”

“I didn’t know you were so ticklish—”

“I’ll kick you.”

“Try it—”

And he does. Squirming against Gavin’s hands, laughing and trying to pry his hands away from his side.

_God_.

He looks so fucking beautiful. So happy. So absolutely perfect.

He wants to pull his shirt off, he wants to leave kisses along his neck. He wants to undress him and have him and nothing else. He wants hours spent in bed with him, learning the contours of his body, what Connor’s lips feel like against his. He wants to memorize every part of him for when they won’t be able to be together again.

Gavin pulls away, a hand resting against his chest, forcing his expression pained which isn’t difficult to do. He needs to stop this. End it before he does something stupid. Play it off. Fake it until he doesn’t have to worry anymore. Put some much needed space between them.

“Are you alright?” Connor asks, a little bit breathless, a smile still on his face, disappearing quickly. “Did I hurt you?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I’m surrendering this time.”

 

**11:45 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Seventeen**

“Gavin?”

“Hm?”

“Do you want to play that game again? Two truths and a lie?”

“Sure. You going first?”

“Yeah.”

He’s thought this through carefully, spent the entire day trying to come up with the best possible words for this, the best way he can say what he wants and make sure Gavin listens, believes.

“You’re awful,” he says, voice quiet. “I’m going to miss you when you’re gone. And kissing you might be a mistake but caring for you isn’t.”

Gavin looks up at him, smile disappearing from his face with each word, shaking his head, almost like he’s angry with him, his features shutting down in annoyance, “Why are you making this harder than it has to be?”

He doesn’t know. It isn’t as if he wants to torture himself. It isn’t as if putting all this out there is going to make them able to be together. It will only hurt more knowing how mutual their feelings really are. But he thinks Gavin should be aware of how much he cares for him. How deep their bond is. How much of a good person Gavin actually is, how much he’ll be missed.

He can’t say that he loves him, but he can say that he’ll miss him, that he isn’t a mistake.

“Do you—”

“I think I’m going to go to sleep,” Gavin says. “Can you turn off the light?”

Connor nods and forces himself to stand, moving to the light switch and plunging them into darkness. Easier that way—pretending something didn’t happen.

They have no future together. _Nothing_. They are just tormenting one another with this.

 

**6:10 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Eighteen**

They have a routine in the vaguest possible sense of the word. Connor sleeps through the night, waking up very little. But Gavin sleeps throughout the day. Random snatches of hours here and there. Connor is always ready, making him coffee when he decides to stay up for a while, helping him walk to and from places he needs to get. Helping him change his clothes if he asks, which he rarely does, but he always asks for help to get his shirt off, and then he lingers there, letting Connor’s fingers brush over the tender skin of his ribs under the guise of checking how the bruise is healing.

Then they part. Gavin insists he can take care of himself when it’s anything more than he will allow Connor to see. The burns on his body, the bruise, the pain—

He can handle that.

Mostly he just likes Connor being close to him. He likes how his arm feels around his waist, holding him up when he can do just fine on his own now. He’s always been able to do just fine. He just didn’t want Connor to let go of him.

They have a routine in the vaguest possible sense of the word and it consist of one thing:

Gavin stealing whatever contact with this boy he can get.

 

**11:18 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Eighteen**

He traces the shape of Gavin’s face in the dark, moves his fingers carefully to draw along the bridge of his nose, the distorted curve of his scar.

“I really am going to miss you, Gavin,” he whispers.

His fingers are pulled from his face, pressed to Gavin’s lips, “I’m going to miss you, too, Connor.”

He wanted different words. He wanted _then let’s keep in touch._ He wanted Gavin to fight for him. Maybe he should fight instead. Hold on as hard as he can. Never let Gavin shake him. But it’s difficult to fight when he feels so unwanted.

 

**4:28 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Nineteen**

They watch game shows and Connor laughs when Gavin yells out answers that are always, always wrong. And in return Gavin teases him about responses that shouldn’t be on the board, but somehow are. Always halfway through _what the fuck kind of guess is that?_ when it dings in as correct and his face falls into pure befuddlement.

They watch cooking shows where Gavin critiques the skillset of the chefs, saying in depth what he’d make inside. Connor listens on in silence, nodding his head in encouragement for him to keep talking. He teases Gavin a lot for eating out so much on this trip, but he realizes he has no idea what he’s like at home, when he has a stove and can go grocery shopping. He wonders what his pantry looks like, what kind of meals he would make for himself.

They watch movies and talk over them with stories. Gavin and his friend going to the theater and seeing it together, laughing and talking the entire drive home. Connor reminiscing about his childhood, him and his brother and their mother standing in line on premiere night.

Sometimes they even watch reality shows. Women trying on wedding dresses, planning out their perfect, special day. Models posing in front of cameras, walking down runways. Friends fighting with each other, cutting to interviews where they role their eyes.

It is most certainly not good for them to spend their days like this. Too much time in bed watching television, but it’s comfortable, too. He likes being close to Gavin like this, a sense of intimacy. It’ll vanish soon. It always does. He’ll savor it while he can have it.

 

**10:20 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Nineteen**

Connor’s phone rings from where it sits on the other side of the room, resting beside his bag on the dresser. Abandoned when he went to shower. It’s the first time Gavin has ever heard it ring. The first time he’s ever heard the default song play, the quiet buzz as it vibrates against the wooden surface.

Gavin is not a nosy person.

But he stands up and he makes his way across the room, reaching out for the phone. It’s the first call Connor has received. It could be important, and maybe Gavin isn’t his best friend of thirty years, but he can at least check the caller ID, yell the name through the door and see if Connor wants him to answer it, can’t he?

So he picks up the phone, turns it over to see the screen.

And feels his body go cold.

_Lieutenant._

His heart beats in his chest fast, his fingers trembling as he answers the call. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t entirely have control over himself anymore.

“Hello?”

“Detective Anderson?”

_Detective Anderson?_

“No—this is—No. Sorry. He can’t come to phone right now. C-Can I take a message?”

“Oh, no. Just tell him to call back when he’s available. This number, please.”

“Okay,” he says, and he can hear the sounds of people talking in the background. Phones ringing and papers shuffling. It sounds—

It sounds like the background of the station when Tina calls him at work.

_Detective Anderson._

He hangs up, setting the phone down, his body vibrating with anxiety. Fear and anger and sadness all culminating into a bone deep trembling that won’t disappear. His stomach is in knots, sinking far, far away.

Connor is only a few yards away, behind a door and in a shower, probably mumbling along to a song stuck in his head. He’s close enough to shout, to get his attention, to say something. He’s so close.

Somehow, he feels like a thousand miles away.

One thing he said, one thing Gavin didn’t know and didn’t realize how important it was to him, and Connor feels like a stranger. He’s somehow changed his entire personality, his entire being, in the span of twenty-five seconds.

It isn’t just how far away Connor feels now—

It’s—

How _empty_ he suddenly feels. How lonely. He thought they were closer. He thought, even with secrets kept from one another, that they never lied.

Connor said he quit. Connor said he didn’t have a job anymore.

It doesn’t really matter if he even _is_ still employed—he was—is—was a _detective._

And Gavin is a criminal.

 

**10:46 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Nineteen**

It takes exactly twenty-five seconds.

A hand on the door knob, a small smile on his face, ready to curl back up in the bed beside Gavin, ready to watch the show, ready to keep pretending that this will end any way other than terrible.

Looking towards an empty mattress, to the dresser where his things lay, where Gavin leans against it, something in his hand, eyes stuck on the mass-produced painting hanging above the bed.

And then—

It’s like time slows down. He opens his mouth to speak, confusion muddling his brain, forcing words he doesn’t even know stumbling out his mouth. He thinks he says, _what are you doing?_ But they trip and tumble because—

His things are littered across the top of the dresser. Clothes on the ground. Books laying pushed off to the side.

And then Gavin holds his hand up, the thing in it shiny and gold.

His badge.

 

**10:47 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Nineteen**

“Gavin, I can explain—”

“That you’re a cop? A detective? Did you seek me out? Did you purposefully try to find me? You working for the Kamskis?”

“Gavin, it’s not—”

“You know what, I don’t fucking care.”

“Gavin, please—”

 

**10:50 P.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Nineteen**

The badge is thrown to the floor and maybe that’s what makes him not care. Something inside of him breaks, arguing and yelling. They’re both screaming so loud, voices overlapping. He doesn’t even know what Gavin is saying. He doesn’t even know what _he’s_ saying. He’s lost the pleading tone in his voice and now he’s just livid.

Gavin going through his things, tossing them aside like they mean nothing. The cover to his  book is bent, his clothes left unfolded on the floor, the badge thrown with such a force it’s like everything in the world has tumbled down around him.

He doesn’t even bother explaining anymore. He just wants to yell.

Because Gavin isn’t believing him. Gavin doesn’t trust him like he said he did. Gavin doesn’t care about anything.

“You’re a liar,” he says, and it makes Connor go quiet.

_Lies, lies, lies._

_Liar._

_All you do is lie._

And he’s not even good at it.

“I never lied to you,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know if that’s the truth. He’s racking his brain, trying to remember every conversation they’ve had, every word he’s spoken.

“Why’d you do it?” Gavin asks. “Why’d you have to pretend to like me?”

“I—”

Gavin shakes his head and the look on his face keeps Connor from speaking. It silences his words as easily as if it was a knife against his throat.

“Fuck you, Connor”

_Fuck you, Connor_ he says and he moves quickly, grabbing his things.

Protests fall from Connor’s lips, reaching forward, trying to stop him, trying to keep him here. He’s back to pleading, begging, crying. _Don’t go, Gavin._

Don’t go, Hank.

Don’t go, Chloe.

Don’t go, Markus.

Everyone always leaves him—

He knew Gavin was going to eventually join the ranks but he thought he had longer. He thought it was going to end differently. The two of them parting ways because it’s what they had to do, not because Gavin would end up hating him like this.

He’s pushed away and he can’t get his words straight in his head. He feels drunk or drugged, tongue unable to say anything he wants, just _please don’t go_ blurred together over and over.

And then Gavin is gone.

And he is left all alone again.

 

**1:33 A.M. | SK-16 E / Day Twenty**

He’s not going to cry. He’s not going to notice Connor’s absence. He’s not going to do anything but drive to Detroit and kill his father. If he keeps that on repeat in his head, he won’t even think about the fact Connor ever existed.

He’s nothing. He means nothing to him.

 

**2:01 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Twenty**

He thought the tears would stop by now. Three hours and they should have run their course. He goes through it in cycles. Thirty minutes of crying so heavily he leaves his face sore from wiping away the tears, the sleeves of his shirt wet from trying to keep them away. Ten minutes of silence, of staring at the ceiling and thinking that he’s finally emptied out of his ability to be loved by anyone, and then he starts crying again.

Crying about everything.

About not kissing Gavin when he had the chance, because all he wants now is the memory of it. That’s all he’s asking for. Just a memory.

But he cries because of Markus and Hank and Chloe, too. Abandoning him to his own devices. Thinking he can survive on his own. Leaving him for the wolves.

Just when he thinks he has someone in his life that cares about him, they disappear. Chloe off to Michigan. Markus off to Simon. Hank to the alcohol. Gavin—

Gavin to wherever he plans on going, whatever he plans on doing.

Connor turns over, presses his face into the pillow and lets himself cry, doing his best to suffocate the scream. His head aches like someone has taken a knife to it and cut open his skull, like someone has driven a screwdriver into his brain. It hurts. Everything hurts. His chest, his heart, his head, his soul. His entire being aches with a pain that feels like it will never go away.


	11. Combustion

**8:46 A.M. | Day Twenty**

He misses him.

 

**12:34 P.M. | Day Twenty**

He misses him.

 

**4:27 A.M. | Day Twenty**

He misses him.

 

**9:59 P.M. | Day Twenty**

He misses him.

 

**2:13 A.M. | Day Twenty-One**

_He misses him._

 

**2:14 A.M. | Day Twenty-Two**

He can’t keep his eyes open any longer. He didn’t get any sleep last night. His body is so emotionally drained that it’s ready to collapse. He’s kept going this far—he just isn’t sure how much more he can cling onto this.

There was no money left in his wallet. Terrible timing for Gavin to leave him.

Connor avoided the cold as much as he could. Going into stores and buildings, wandering around and using what little money he had to stretch out a visit at a diner until he was asked to leave. Hopping from one place to the next, trying to stay in the warmth.

When everywhere closed down, when he decided to save what little money he had left, he relegated himself to the cold. Let it take him away again. Stuck out in freezing temperature with snow crunching under his feet until he found a place to sit, eyes ready to slide closed, ready to sleep.

He is terrified of sleeping. He is terrified that he won’t wake up again.

He might be starting to hallucinate. Does hypothermia cause delusions? Or is it the exhaustion? Both leaking into his head, taking over whatever he has left. There are spots in his visions, his body trembling. Water in his lungs, glass laying in broken crystals in front of him, reflecting the light of the moon and the street lamps.

His chest aches like he’s drowning, like Hank is shoving him backwards, screaming at him, like his heart has been broken a thousand times over. His lungs yearn to breathe, to finally, finally inhale and exhale like a normal human being but they are stuck on this endless loop of constriction, trying its hardest not to let him break down.

“Connor?”

_Connor._

He is tired of hearing his name. Chloe and Markus and Hank and Gavin have all tainted it. Turned it into something that makes his chest hurt.

_I don’t think I’m going to come back, Connor._

_I don’t love you, Connor._

_Leave me the fuck alone, Connor._

_Fuck you, Connor._

And here he is, all alone again, shivering from the cold. He doesn’t even have his scarf anymore. Left it in Gavin’s car where it disappeared along with him. Which he prefers. If he had it, he would only think of how it looked when Gavin was wearing it, when he buried his face into the knit to hide his smile.

“Connor!”

_Connor,_ said almost frustrated with him over the phone before she said her goodbyes, hanging up to never return his calls again.

_Connor,_ said in a voice dripping with false pity and concern before he disappeared out the door, leaving for someone else.

_Connor,_ said angrily and followed by expletives, door slamming in his face, opened again days later when he didn’t return to work.

_Connor—_

“Connor,” whispered quietly, hands touching his face, lifting his gaze from the road. “What are you doing out here?”

“G-Gavin?”

“It’s fucking freezing, come here—”

His hands are slow, weak at pushing away Gavin’s trying to help pull him up from where he sits on the curb.

“Leave me alone—”

“Connor, please—”

“You left,” he says, aware that his voice is coming out almost drunk, words slipping together like he doesn’t have proper control of himself. “You left me.”

“I came back.”

“You _left me.”_

Gavin’s hands pull away and he nods but there’s something strange about his face. Connor expected him to be angry or an illusion. One or the other. Not—

Not apologetic. Not regretful.

“You left me,” he whispers again.

“I’m sorry.”

It’s so different from the last time he apologized. Where he said it serious but almost in a half-joking manner. Like he knew he needed to say it and he meant it, but he needed to take the edge away from how much his words mean. This time they are laid out, set carefully down, said with every ounce of guilt that exists in the world.

“I didn’t—I didn’t hunt you down. I’m not a cop a-anymore.”

“I know, I believe you.”

“I wasn’t faking it, Gavin, I like you,” he says and it sounds so stupid. _I like you._ Sitting here in the freezing cold, shivering, unable to speak properly, half-crying and half-dead. _I like you._ It doesn’t even begin to touch how he feels about Gavin. “It wasn’t—It was n-never about you. I didn’t come out here because of y-you.”

“I know, Connor, you don’t have to—”

“My friend. I have—I have a friend,” he says, and he feels like he needs to say this. All the truth that’s inside of him, all his secrets. Gavin should know. He should know all of it. “He ki—He died and she ran off to Michigan and I just—”

“Connor, slow down.”

“You should know this,” he whispers.

“I don’t have to know right now. You’re freezing, come on. Let me help you.”

He lets Gavin’s hands touch his shoulders, drag down his arms to his hands, but he doesn’t let Gavin lift him up because he doesn’t understand anything anymore. Gavin left him. He was always going to leave Connor and now he’s here again, only to abandon Connor again in a few days.

“Why did you come back?”

 

**2:20 A.M. | Day Twenty-Two**

Why did he come back?

He doesn’t know.

He drove all the way to Minnesota, almost crossed the border into the next state before he turned around. He was halfway to his destination. He was one day away from killing his father and instead he turned around and drove twelve more hours back the way he came.

Because he missed Connor. He missed him so much it hurt worse than the need to see his father dead. He barely thought about it. He just—

He just turned around.

And then he was at the motel, banging his fist against the door and looking at sleep-deprived woman instead of Connor.

And then the fear spiked through him and he raced through the streets trying to find him, hoping and praying and wishing that he was still here. That somehow, twenty-four hours later, Connor wouldn’t have left the city yet. That he would be somewhere Gavin could find him.

He left so easily. He disappeared from their motel room as if it wasn’t the last time he was ever going to see Connor and he just—

He hates himself for it, but he is so grateful that he could find him. That by some other power he was able to get him back, able to see him again.

_Why did he come back?_

Because—

Because he thinks he might love Connor. Because he thinks that they shouldn’t have ended their relationship on such bad terms. That there should be something other than an argument and kisses pressed against foreheads between them.

Gavin doesn’t know how to voice this. He doesn’t know how to voice any of this. He isn’t used to confessing his feelings for someone. He waited months and months into his relationship with his boyfriend to even rest comfortably in his arms. He isn’t the type to be soft and affectionate with people. That was never offered to him, how is he supposed to give that to someone else?

He doesn’t know how to say anything. He doesn’t know how to speak.

 

**2:21 A.M. | Day Twenty-Two**

Gavin is kissing him and for a minute, all he can think about is how warm his lips are, how soft he is, how welcome the heat is against the frozen weather. He didn’t realize how cold he was until Gavin started kissing him. Not really. It was something in the back of his head. Something he was getting used to.

It takes him a moment to kiss back, to reach forward and pull Gavin closer, closer, closer.

He doesn’t want any space between them. He wants Gavin to kiss him here until he freezes to death. Turn into a boy frozen solid kissing someone he loves this much.

_Loves._

Before he was uncertain that’s what this was. He danced around the topic in his head, reassuring himself he just had an intense crush, a connection he couldn’t shake. This wasn’t love because it was too soon, they were too much of strangers.

They spent nearly every minute of their life together for the last twenty days.

Is that enough time to fall in love with someone? Real, genuine love?

He doesn’t know.

But he is certain that when he thinks of Gavin and the words _I love you_ want to leave his mouth, that he trusts it.

And then, he remembers.

Remembers that Gavin is going to leave him again. That this won’t last.

As much as he loves kissing him, as much as he loves being able to finally have him, he knows this won’t last. Gavin left once. He’ll do it again, and then he won’t come back.

He isn’t even sure if it matters anymore. He already felt the loss. He knows he’ll feel it again. He should just take what he can get. Be selfish for once. The thought leaves him instantly guilty and ashamed. Using someone with a past like Gavin’s—It’s impossible. It’s cruel.

There’s too much between them to have anything at all, isn’t there?

His hands let go of the fabric of Gavin’s jacket, laying flat against his shoulders, pushing him back just enough that it doesn’t make Connor’s heart hurt as much as it could.

“You didn’t—You didn’t answer my question.”

“I—” he sighs. “I came back because I care about you.”

“If you care about me so much, why did you even leave to begin with?” _Why can’t you allow for us to be something more than some strange fleeting thing?_

“I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

“Gavin—”

“I was driving. For—twelve hours. I drove twelve hours and I missed you the entire time. I drove almost eight-hundred miles and all I could think about was how much I wanted you with me. I think—I think you mean the world to me. And I don’t know how you managed that because it really pisses me off that you somehow just… swept in and took over everything.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he whispers. “I’m glad. I’m just pissed that I drove eight hundred miles before I realized that I didn’t want to go any further without you. I came back and I was terrified and I could barely stop crying long enough not to crash. I—I was terrified. That I lost you. I went to the motel and you weren’t there and I just—I couldn’t—I thought I’d never see you again. I thought I’d lost you.”

“Gav—”

“I want this. I want you. I want a future with you. I want to be with you. I don’t want to never see you again. I don’t want you to hate me. I want to give you everything you want. I want us to have more. I want this.”

“You’ll come back for me? After everything?”

“I want to. Can you—Can you get up? Come to the car? It’s cold. You’re freezing.”

He doesn’t answer him. His fingers grab his jacket again, pull him forward so he can kiss Gavin once more. Different this time. _I want this._ More. Everything Connor wants.

He hopes it’s everything Gavin wants, too.

 

**2:24 A.M. | Day Twenty-Two**

He has to push Connor away. Break the kiss so that he can get the idiot inside someplace warm. Gavin carries him to the car like he’s unable to walk, like Connor is his bride and this is their honeymoon, forces him into the passenger seat and leaves a kiss against his forehead. Soft and gentle like Connor would do to him.

They drive back to the motel. He leaves the car running, heat cranked while he gets a room key. He keeps turning back, keeps looking to see Connor sitting there with his hands stretched out in front of the vents, lit by the neon signs and the dim light of the interior.

For the brief time it takes him to get here, to get the room, to bring Connor upstairs—

He allows himself happiness.

 

**3:42 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Twenty-Two**

Gavin is insistent. He feels guilty about it. He knows that Gavin is likely still in pain. He helps Connor take his clothes off, leaving the frozen cold ones to the floor. They’re replaced with Gavin’s hoodie, warm from his body heat. The smell of coffee and cigarettes cleaning to it. Terrible. Awful on its own. But it’s Gavin’s scent and he pulls the hood up over his face, curls up close to him in the bed.

They’ve never been this close before. Arms wrapped around each other, a face pressed into his neck, hot against his ice-cold skin. Gavin feels like a fire, a heater, keeping him alive. The fear of falling asleep and dying vanishes with Gavin this close to him and his eyes slide closed easily as he drifts off before he can make out what Gavin is whispering against his neck.

 

**5:01 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Twenty-Two**

He checks nearly every minute. Making sure Connor is alive. Fingers on his pulse, listening for his heartbeat, for his breathing. He’s half tempted to wake him up every hour to assure himself that Connor is alive. He’s so terrified of him dying right here in his arms. He’s so cold. Like an ice cube. Like a corpse.

_Please don’t die,_ he whispers. _I need you alive._

Alive for what? So Gavin can hurt him worse than this?

He was careful with his words. Picking and choosing them to make sure that he wasn’t telling a lie. He wants this. He wants more. He wants to give Connor the world, the stars, everything he every wanted. He wants to see Connor happy. He wants to be the one to make him smile and laugh. He wants to wake up in the mornings and kiss him while the coffee is brewing. He wants to wrap his arms around Connor’s waist and leave kisses against his shoulder. He wants to run away with him, live on a farm with a dozen cats and five dogs. An army of animals to trample through their garden. Living far, far away from the dangers of the real world. The only people welcome into their perfect space their friends and family.

He wants to be able to tell Connor he loves him. He wants to be able to call him his husband. He wants more than anything to have a future.

He wants it, but he cannot provide it.

Nothing has really changed.

He’s still going to kill his father. He’s still going to abandon Connor.

He is an absolutely terrible person coming back, kissing him, pretending that he’s going to give Connor what he wants. He doesn’t know why he did it. He almost hates Connor for this—for making Gavin realize he might love someone, for thinking he might be lovable. He spent years and years accepting how destroyed and broken he is. How no one could ever accept all the scars and trauma.

And here Connor is, sleeping soundly in his arms, skin like an ice cube, like a corpse.

He presses a little closer, mouths words in the silence, in the dark.

_I’m sorry I love you._

Not _I’m sorry_ and _I love you._ Not two separate statements. Linked together. He is genuinely incredibly apologetic for these feelings in his chest. He has never felt so terrible for caring for someone like he does with Connor.

_Nothing has changed._

He’s going to leave Connor again. He’s going to kill his father. He’s going to jail.


	12. Hearth

**9:05 A.M. | Eastern Motel / Day Twenty-Two**

He wakes slowly, not really able to tell what’s real and what’s fake for a few minutes. For a minute, he thinks he’s laying on the spare bed at Hank’s house, Sumo curled up beside him, faint light streaming in through curtains and casting a soft glow across the room. And then he realizes that’s not right. The walls aren’t the right color—they look much closer to Markus’ apartment and there are arms wrapped around his waist, holding onto him tight. But Markus never laid like this with him, never curled up to his chest. It was always the other way around. Connor small and safe within Markus’ arms. He looks down, hand coming up to pass through Gavin’s hair.

He isn’t supposed to be here, though. He left.

_He left._

“You’re awake.”

He nods, not really believing it until Gavin presses a tentative kiss against his jaw and he remembers.

Remembers being out in the cold, shivering and shaking and unable to find the right words, kissing him again and again despite Gavin trying to get him somewhere warmer. He doesn’t know if the obsessive need to kiss Gavin came from the fact he was denied it for so long or if it was because he just wanted to kiss Gavin and do little else.

“You’re still cold.”

He’s not. Not really. The blankets and Gavin are so warm that he doesn’t want to leave. The air in the room will send shivers down his spine and he doesn’t really want to leave this place right now.

“Can we stay here?” he whispers. “For another week?”

He needs Gavin to talk him out of it. Pull him from the bed and shove him out the door. He’s taken too long. He needs to be in Michigan. He needs to find the people he’s looking for.

“Another hour, tops.”

“Can you kiss me again?” Connor asks. “Since you’re denyin—”

Gavin quiets his words, kisses him slow and steady like he’s mapping out the feel of his mouth, the curve of his lips. Another hour, tops. Another hour of this and he will be happy.

 

**2:16 P.M. | SK-11 S / Day Twenty-Two**

Connor drives. It took a little bit of arguing, a little bit of convincing, but he managed it. Gavin sleeps in the passenger seat, gone too long without rest that even the bumpiness of the road, the brightness of the sky, doesn’t wake him.

He wants to reach over, to grasp his hand and hold it. He doesn’t want to be driving right now. He wants to be kissing him, to get his fill of Gavin before he disappears again. He never said how long. Connor felt strange asking how many days he was planning on being in Detroit. He just hopes it’s brief, that Gavin will keep to what he said, that he’ll come back.

There is a fear in the back of his head, telling him that if they spend too much time apart they’ll realize how little they actually care for each other. Like being around other people will make them discover the only reason they ever liked one another was because that was all they had, that was all that was there.

He knows it isn’t true. It can’t be. This feeling in his chest, this beating of his heart in tune to Gavin’s name—

It’s not going to go away.

But he fears for the future, too. That eventually Gavin will leave him. Someday, they’ll argue and they won’t be able to fix the anger between them and they’ll fall apart. Or maybe Gavin will realize he doesn’t care for Connor at all, he’ll find someone else, just like Markus did. Or maybe—

Maybe he’ll be like Hank. And Connor won’t be enough, his pleading for therapy and help won’t be enough. He’ll be yelled at and screamed at and pushed aside, shoved away until one day, Connor will come to visit him and find a corpse and a note.

Suddenly he can’t breathe. Tears are forming in his eyes and he can’t seem to make them go away. The fear of losing someone he loves like a knife cutting him open. He tries to remind himself that these are possibilities, these are _ifs_ or _maybes_ not _whens. Could_ not _will._ But he’s thinking of himself in two years, finding Gavin with someone else, finding Gavin dead or apathetic and his chest hurts so much that he struggles to keep his hand away from holding onto it, pushing against ribs as if it could stop the heartbeat’s painful rhythm. Reminding him of Hank’s death, telling him it will happen again.

He doesn’t know if he can handle another dead body, he doesn’t know if he can handle another person leaving him.

The car rolls to a stop on the side of the road, Connor’s hands reaching up to his face, brushing away tears, choking on air.

And he prays for Gavin to stay asleep, to not see him like this.

But he prays for Gavin to wake up, to see him, to say something, to comfort him.

He doesn’t know what he wants, just that he wants the best for Gavin. For him to be happy. He tells himself that even if Gavin’s happiness means the loss of Connor in his life in a few months, in a year, in a decade, he will allow it. Nothing matters more to him than Gavin being happy.

 

**2:18 P.M. | SK-11 S / Day Twenty-Two**

“Con?”

“Go back to sleep.”

“Everything alright?”

“Everything is fine. Just go back to sleep.”

 

**6:43 P.M. | Cenex / Day Twenty-Two**

“Stop,” Connor says, reaching out and taking the plastic toy fan from Gavin’s hands. “Anybody ever tell you you’re like a child sometimes?”

“I believe you have at least three times today,” he replies, picking up a stuffed animal from the display. Black cat, with a tag that reads _Mocha_ on the inside. “Look at the little kitty. Cute, right?”

“Very cute,” he says, setting the fan down with the others, picking up a different toy. “This one looks like you.”

“Wha—Rude.”

“I’m going to buy it.”

“You can’t—”

“Look,” Connor says, opening up the heart shaped tag stuck to the ear, showing the name printed neatly above the copyright information. “It’s even named Gavin.”

“Fuck off,” he says. “You calling me a rat?”

“Absolutely.”

“I prefer raccoons.”

“I’m sure you do. Oh, do you think I could buy that instead? It looks quite a bit like you, too.”

“What? What are you pointing at?”

“That.”

“Oh—the trashcan? Fuck you, Connor.”

He laughs and pulls Gavin close and it’s—

Unexpected but not unwelcome. The kiss. It’s just strange. A reminder that right now Gavin is a fraud letting this boy believe in something else. He tries to make the kiss last as long as possible, standing on tip-toes and pulling on his coat, not letting it end quickly and naturally like he should.

When Connor steps away, he’s smiling, pressing another kiss against his forehead.

“You look surprised.”

“I’m not used to you yet,” he says.

“You think you ever will be?”

“No.”

He takes Connor’s hand, the one free from holding onto a little stuffed rat, squeezing his fingers tightly. He wonders if the words _I love you_ could travel unspoken in that grasp. He hopes so. He’ll never be able to tell Connor himself. Not when he’s going to leave him. He’s already being cruel and terrible right now. How can he make it worse?

 

**10:06 P.M. | UD-2 E / Day Twenty-Two**

The way Gavin laughs, the way he talks, the way he acts—

Sometimes, it makes Connor want to pull the car over and smother him with a kiss, it makes him want to go on a thirty-minute speech about how much he cares for him. It makes him want to leave a mark against his neck so the next time someone looks at the two of them, they know.

It makes him wish they had more than just a day left together before they’re separated again. Because the separation is terrifying. It isn’t as if he can’t live without Gavin, it’s just how scared he is. Scared of what will happen once they’re there. What information will surface, how it will change them, how it can ruin them.

 

**2:52 A.M. | Kwik Trip / Day Twenty-Three**

“You look exhausted.”

“I’m fine.”

 _“’I’m fine’,_ fuck, Connor, you sound like me. Do you want me to repeat the speech you said the first night we met?”

“We need to get to Michigan.”

“I can drive,” a kiss pressed against his cheek, cautious, like this is a boundary they haven’t yet crossed. “Just get some rest.”

“You need your sleep, too—”

“I slept enough. I can drive through the night.”

Connor nods, but he’s quiet, looking away from Gavin to the front of the store, the keys in his hand still, held onto tight. Not letting them go.

“What’s wrong?”

“We aren’t taking the path you mapped out,” he says. “I didn’t follow your directions.”

“Okay. That’s fine—”

Connor turns back to him, keys held out, dropping them in Gavin’s palm, “I… need to stop somewhere.”

“Other than Kalamazoo?”

“Yes.”

Gavin is not an idiot, contrary to popular belief. He is not a fool. He is not under the illusion that he knows everything about Connor, that there are no secrets between them. He is completely aware of everything he doesn’t know. The gap. The canyon. The inability to ever fill that up with how little time they have left.

But sometimes, he thinks, he knows enough that he’s allowed to love Connor. That he’s allowed to think of what they could have been if it wasn’t for his father. He thinks that what little he does know is enough to keep going.

Maybe he never really knew the exact details of Connor’s visit. Going to see his brother and visit a grave. He thought he knew that. This is different. This is an extra stop. This is something he didn’t mention before. It feels like a secret he should have known, a lie he should have been able to detect.

“Where?” he asks, and he has to fight this small crack in his voice, the one that denies that he should be fine with not knowing the details, the exactness.

“Petoskey.”

“Petoskey? What’s in Petoskey?”

“A friend.”

He nods, “Okay. We—I… We’ll stop there.”

“Are you sure?”

He forces out a laugh, nods, takes Connor’s hand in his. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

He tries not to pretend that he doesn’t want to know more. What good will this information do him in twenty-four hours when his father is dead on the floor and he’s behind bars?

 

**5:43 A.M. | US-2 E / Day Twenty-Three**

Falling asleep in a car isn’t the easiest thing to do, but he manages. The quiet of the radio playing, soft in the background. The sound of the wheels against the road, the sound of Gavin’s quiet humming along with the music that stops abruptly and slowly starts again, like he keeps forgetting Connor’s trying to sleep. He doesn’t have the energy to tell him it’s okay, that if Gavin sang it might help. He likes his voice. He wants to listen to it more. Connor tries to remind himself that they will have more together after this. That he has his whole life to hear Gavin’s voice. But it’s difficult to convince himself of that when he thought the same with Markus. That Markus would be with him forever, that he would never lose him.

Hank told him one to stop day dreaming. Stop thinking of the future. Stop thinking of how nice life will be in twenty years. He had said it because he believed that there was no hope, that there was nothing good to strive too. He lost his wife and his son ran away. What hope was there left? Connor is headed on the same path. People leaving him, people dying.

 

**8:15 A.M. | M-28 E / Day Twenty-Three**

He dreams of his brothers. Of Chloe and Hank and Gavin. A backyard full of people. His brothers racing each other around the perimeter like when they were kids. He watches Chloe and Hank argue and laugh by the grill and he watches Gavin by himself, leaned against a tree with his gaze up to the sky. Connor follows, looking up the clouds. They’re shapes. Shapes of something. They feel familiar, but he can’t tell what they are. Like they’re mirrored and flipped around too many times to be recognizable. They move along lazily, leaving streaks of night sky behind them.

Connor looks back to where Gavin was, where he no longer is. The backyard has been plunged into darkness, dim lamps hung around the edges that offer little light. He searches for the others, finds that they aren’t there. It’s empty, it’s quiet, and it feels _wrong_.

When he wakes, he’s crying. Quiet and soft and he brushes the tears away as inconspicuously as he can manage as he turns away from Gavin, even though all he really wants is to be able to turn into him, to hold him tight, to not let him leave, too.

 

**12:39 P.M. | Twisted Olive / Day Twenty-Three**

He hasn’t been in Petoskey in seventeen years. The last time he was here, he was with his friends, kissing Markus on the top of the ski slopes at the lodge and watching North and Josh race each other down the hill, watching Chloe beat them without even trying, watching Nines try his best to not act like a third wheel. It feels strange to be back. He doesn’t know if he likes it, but he isn’t sure if it’s just the fact he’s back here once again or if it’s the fact he’s here alone, with Gavin. Not a single soul that was with them the first time around. Just him and Gavin.

“Gavin?” he asks, voice quiet and timid, drowned out by the other patrons. “You wanted to know, right? What I’m doing here? Why I need to be in Petoskey?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “I’m not going to force you.”

He considers that for a moment. Considers all the secrets he kept. All the ones he’s let Gavin know. His dead brother and his dead mother and his singular piece of family left who he hasn’t talked to in years.

He feels like time is running out between the two of them. Like they really only have this last day before they get to Kalamazoo, before Gavin leaves him, before there is the empty and unknowable.

He hopes Gavin comes back.

“I told you my friend ran away to Michigan, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“She did but…” he says quietly. “A few months after she came here, she stopped returning my calls. She wouldn’t have just stopped talking to me, Gavin. She wasn’t like that.”

“You think something happened to her?”

“Yes.”

She wouldn’t have left him to deal with Hank’s suicide on his own. Not intentionally. He has to believe that, even if he would prefer Chloe leaving him behind, that she left him behind. But he knows better. He knows that Chloe isn’t that type of person. She doesn’t abandon people. He can feel that something is wrong, that something terrible has happened.

She might be dead, and he doesn’t know if he can handle another dead body, but he has to know what happened to her.


	13. Enkindle

**3:52 P.M. | Petoskey / Day Twenty-Three**

Gavin waits in the car and watches in silence as Connor walks up to the house. He’s trying to think, trying to process, trying to understand.

Why _hadn’t_ Connor called the police if he thought his friend was missing? Why come all this way? Why hitchhike across Canada to get here when flying would’ve been so much quicker and, in the long run, cheaper? Staying with Gavin while he healed took all of his money away, left him waiting in the cold because he couldn’t afford a sixty-dollar motel bill to stay warm.

He doesn’t understand.

And he can’t bring himself to ask. He can’t bring himself to believe it’s any of his business. Especially when tomorrow, they’ll never see each other again.

_Fuck._

Life is so fucking unfair. Providing him someone to love, someone to care for, someone like Connor and then ripping him away again.

If Tina was here, if she knew, maybe she would tell him this is a sign. A sign that he shouldn’t go through with this. A sign that he needs to stay, needs to be with Connor, needs to see this out.

He doesn’t believe in signs. He doesn’t believe in fate. He doesn’t believe in luck.

He believes in revenge and justice. He believes his father should die for what he’s done, and he’s going to be the one to make that happen.

 

**3:52 P.M. | Petoskey / Day Twenty-Three**

“Connor? What are you doing here?”

“Hi,” he says, forcing a smile on his face, forcing it to be as real as he can manage. “Is Chloe here?”

“No.”

“North, please—”

“She’s not here.”

He sighs, feels his heart break. Slowly. A thousand fractures spiderwebbing through his heart, infecting his bones, turning him into absolutely nothing. All of his hope that she was here all along, that she’s been safe, is gone. And he knows she isn’t lying. North was always a good liar, but the look on her face, the worry, the concern—

_She isn’t lying_.

She wouldn’t lie about Chloe. Not when the two of them are as in love as they are. The two have talked for the last two years about moving in together. Chloe going to Michigan to be with her girlfriend, where the two would likely buy a house together, get engaged, get married—

“Did she—Did she come by at all?”

“No.”

“Has she called you?”

“Connor, what happened?”

“Just—” he sighs, because he feels like he’s going to pass out, like someone has taken a sledgehammer to his head. He’s going to fall down, he’s going to die. “Answer me. Please.”

“She’s texted, yeah,” North replies. “Connor—”

“She didn’t call you?”

“Not for a few months, but it isn’t like that’s weird—”

“No,” he says, taking a step back. “I guess not.”

“You _guess_ not? You think something happened to her?”

“She said she was coming here to visit you,” Connor says. “And she didn’t. So, yes, North, I think something happened to her. She hasn’t called you? She’s only texted?”

“You sound like a conspiracy theorist. What _exactly_ did she tell you?”

 

**9:15 A.M.**

They didn’t argue after Hank died. They barely spoke. A few days and a funeral and she was packing her bags. Telling him she had to go. To see North. It was the first thing either of them had said that wasn’t related to the basics of cooking or cleaning. She wiped tears from her eyes, telling him she needed to be with North, needed the comfort of her girlfriend when one of her friends had died.

And he wanted to scream. He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her that the only thing he needed was to have _his only friend_ with him for this. To help _him_ with this. But all of the fight that was in him was gone and he was tired of begging and pleading people to stay.

He asked her once not to go.

And she looked back, apologized, and disappeared.

The last time they talked, the last time they spoke over the phone, her exact words where _I don’t think I’m going to come back, Connor._ He thought he heard fear in her voice then. He thought he recognized terror in what she was saying, a sign that she knew something was going to happen. Or did he mistake it all? Was it anger or annoyance? Was she abandoning both him and North? Was she leaving everything behind? Chloe loved North. She wouldn’t have left her.

She might have left him, but she wouldn’t have left North. Not like this.

He doesn’t know anymore. He doesn’t know anything. He feels lost and hopeless.

This entire trip with Gavin he has spent trying to get him to stop in random towns she had been in, places she had called from when she updated him on where she was. A bar filled with terrible people. A diner just before the Canadian border. Museums and laundromats and motels and gas stations empty of the hope that anyone would recognize her, even when he had a badge to try and convince them that this was as serious as he feels it is.

So stupidly desperate to find a girl who had left him behind.

 

**3:58 P.M. | Petoskey / Day Twenty-Three**

“She said she was coming here,” he says quietly. “She said she was coming to see you.”

“When was that?”

“Three months ago.”

North goes silent, shaking her head, a quiet apology. All _she_ can manage. He brings his hands up, wipes away tears forming at the edge of his vision, watching North through blurry vision as she bites her lip, as she turns away, as she tries to hide how upset she is. She was always trying to be tough, always trying to put on a front to keep herself protected.

Gavin reminded him of Hank before, but he thinks he is quite a bit like North, too.

“If she’s missing, we have to call the police.”

“Yeah,” he whispers.

“Are you alright?”

He shakes his head, turning back to where Gavin sits in the car, desperate to run to him, to curl up against him back in that motel room yesterday, spend that week in bed with him instead of an hour, allow for a few more days where he didn’t know this.

If Chloe isn’t here—

If she isn’t with North—

There is only one place he can check before he gives up entirely.

“I’m going to visit my brother,” he says. “Can you—”

“Call Markus?”

He nods. He doesn’t have any proof that Chloe is here in Michigan. She could have run away to Seattle to stay with Markus and Simon. She could have run away to Florida to be with Josh. She could be anywhere.

His heart aches in his chest, a painful reminder that it’s still alive, still beating, still hoping.

“I have to go,” he whispers. “I’m… sorry.”

Sorry that it happened this way. He didn’t have North’s number after he broke up with Markus. He didn’t have anyone’s number. He had no way of contacting them. They stopped caring about him the second Markus left him behind for a pretty blond boy with pretty blue eyes.

He should be thankful in some way. That he found Gavin instead. That he cares so much about someone else again.

But it is hard to be thankful for anything when his only friend is missing, when she is likely dead, when someone could have her phone right now, sending texts to North to keep up the pretense that everything is okay.

“Connor? Do you want to come in?”

He nods and follows her into the house, sits with her as she makes her way through her list of contacts. It takes far too long. Too many times dialing, waiting for an answer, trying again and again. Calling every single person that they can think.

_Not with Markus. Not with Simon. Not with Josh._

He wishes they could call Nines. Neither of them have his number—if he even _has_ a phone. Connor wouldn’t know. North wouldn’t know. North was never close with him, and Connor hasn’t spoken with him since he moved away to Alaska with Chloe.

They have no answers.

They have only wasted precious hours that he could be out there, looking for her.

 

**8:23 P.M. | Petoskey / Day Twenty-Three**

The car door opens and he watches Connor slide in, hands busying themselves with buckling his seatbelt in, adjusting the hat on his head, playing with the ends of his scarf.

“Connor?”

“She’s not here.”

“So—”

“Kalamazoo. We go to Kalamazoo.”

“Con—”

“Please, Gavin. Let’s just go.”

He reaches out and takes his hand, forcing it away from the frayed ends of the scarf, holding onto it tight.

“Take a minute. Take a breath.”

“I can’t,” he whispers. “I can’t take a breath. If I do—”

He’ll break. Gavin gets that. Holding everything in, shoving it down as far deep as it will go, hoping that it won’t resurface, that everything will just stay hidden. If he breathes he will break, and if he breaks, he might not be able to get put back together again.

“You need to,” he says. _You need to breathe._ He needs to allow him that chance to break. He has been holding it all in the entire time they’ve been together, dealing with Gavin’s messes, dealing with Gavin’s crying fits in the middle of the night, his terrible nightmares and the awful fight in the middle of that bar.

Connor needs to break. He needs to let it out. Gavin knows from experience that holding something in is just a temporary thing. Eventually it will overflow, eventually it will destroy everything in its path.

“I’ll get us a place to stay tonight. We can go in the morning.”

Connor looks like he’s ready to argue, like he’s ready to scream. _Good._ If he does, at least he’s letting a little bit of it out. But he doesn’t. He simply nods and that’s all there is.

 

**9:40 P.M. | Days Inn / Day Twenty-Three**

“Here,” Gavin says, handing him a sandwich that’s been carefully wrapped. “Eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t really give a fuck if you’re hungry, Connor, you need to eat.”

“She’s missing, Gavin—”

“And you haven’t eaten in twelve hours so fucking get over yourself and eat the damn food.”

“Gavin—”

He shakes his head, cutting Connor off, kneeling beside him at the chair, leaning forward to press his forehead against Connor’s.

“I care about you more than I know how to handle, Connor,” he whispers. “I know this sucks. I know how this feels. I know this isn’t what you wanted. But I need you to eat, I need you to take care of yourself. I need you to stay alive. I need you alive.”

“Gavin,” he replies and his voice is just as quiet as Gavin’s is, a small secret between them. “I’m fine. I’m not… I’m not unstable, okay? I’m fine.”

“Then please eat and get some sleep.”

“We should have just drove to Kalamazoo.”

“You need to take a break.”

“I need to find her.”

“We’ll leave early. I promise.”

“It’s a waste of time—”

“Connor, _please.”_

Connor doesn’t respond. He looks back at Gavin, looks away again. It’s a silent ten minutes filled with Gavin trying to figure out how much he can beg Connor before he’ll give in. He’s stubborn, but he hates the way his voice sounds when it’s pleading like this. He heard it far too often as a child, said the word _please_ enough to hate it, to be disgusted with the shape his mouth makes when he has to say it.

But Connor finally nods, leans forward and kisses Gavin, makes it last far longer than he should but far shorter than Gavin wants. He wants more. He always wants more. Every time Connor kisses him he worries it’s going to be the last time and he needs to stretch it out, make sure that it’s enough to sustain him for fifty-plus years of prison time.

“We leave early,” Connor repeats.

Gavin nods, kisses him again one last time before he presses the food into Connor’s hand again.

They’ll leave early.

 

**6:02 A.M. | Days Inn / Day Twenty-Four**

He barely slept, for all of his telling Connor to sleep. It’s a little bit hypocritical, a little bit selfish. He didn’t entirely ask Connor to stay here for another night because he was concerned about Connor’s wellbeing—although, it was a part of it. He mostly just wanted one more night. A night he could savor with him. Being curled up to his chest, inhaling the scent of shitty hotel soap and pine, the faint smell of cigarettes attached to him now. Gavin is infecting him each day that goes by.

He barely sleeps, and when he finally falls away, it is only for a few hours. He wakes to the alarm clock going off, to Connor moving, pulling away from him and towards the edge of the bed. Gavin blinks in the darkness, reaching out for him, finding his waist and pulling him back.

“Don’t go,” he whispers.

“We’re leaving early.”

“Just wait,” Gavin murmurs, pressing a kiss against his shoulder. “Come here.”

“Gavin—”

“Ten minutes isn’t going to make a difference.”

“It might.”

“Connor, please, placate me?”

It takes him a minute before he nods, before he melts back into Gavin’s arms. He leaves kisses against his neck, holds onto him tight to keep him from leaving again.

Today is the day they are going to break apart. Today is the last day Gavin will ever see him. This is the last time they will ever lay in a bed together, the last time he will be able to hold him like this, the last time he will be able to say these words where the dark of the room and the sky outside will keep them safe.

“Thank you,” he whispers, kissing him again. “For everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” he repeats. “You’re incredible, Connor, and I’ll miss you. So thank you for being on that side of the road. Thank you for being a good person. Thank you for existing. Thank you for everything.”

There’s more. More that he can’t put into words because he isn’t sure if he can allow himself to feel them.

_Thank you_ for teaching him he could love someone, that someone could care for him, even if it’s ending. It hurts and it’s awful and it’s painful and sometimes he has the fleeting thought that he hates Connor for allowing him happiness that he has to now throw away, but he is more grateful than angry. He’s grateful that these last few weeks, as terrible as some of them have been, have also been—

Amazing.

Incredible.

Wonderful.

He wants to tell Connor he loves him. He feels like he could, like Connor would accept those words, that he might even return them. But he can’t. He can’t leave Connor with that.

“I hope you find her,” he whispers. “I hope everything works out for you.”

“You sound like you’re saying goodbye.”

He can’t say he isn’t when he is. He can’t lie to Connor anymore. He just has to carefully choose his words. Maybe this is worse, though. Making him think he has something instead of just telling him he won’t come back.

“Gavin?” he sounds scared, reaching up to hold onto him. “You’re coming back, aren’t you?”

It takes him a second to keep from crying, to steady his voice enough that it comes out unbroken:

“I want to have a future with you, Connor. I want everything with you.”

Connor nods, turning around to face him, pressing a kiss against his lips, pushing him back against the mattress. He lets Connor kiss him. Just for a little bit before he pushes him away, whispers an apology against his throat where he leaves a kiss to cover it up, soften the blow.

Not like this. They aren’t going to get together like this. He isn’t going to take one more thing from Connor before he leaves and he isn’t—

He isn’t _ready._ No matter how much he would want to have sex with him. There is something inside of him that is broken. A ticking monster that resurfaces whenever there is the possibility of intimacy beyond just strangers in the back of a bar.

He can’t do this. He can’t have this.

“You don’t have to apologize, Gavin.”

He nods. He knows this. _He knows this._ But the apology is for much more than the rejection of this. It’s for everything. Everything he has ever done and will do to Connor.

_I’m sorry I love you._

He wants to say it again, to keep it a secret pressed into Connor’s skin so that he won’t ever forget how terrible he feels about each second they’ve spent together for the last few weeks. Even if he is grateful for their time—he’s _ruined_ Connor more than he was already ruined. He’s going to leave him devastated and there’s nothing he’s doing to change that.

_I’m_

_sorry_

_I_

_love_

_you._

_I’m sorry it was me. I’m sorry sorry sorry sorry—_

**9:27 A.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Four**

The drive is quiet. Neither of them speaking for the three hours it takes to get from there to here. Gavin follows the directions that Connor gives him, the only words spoken in the car related to the drive. Sometimes, Gavin’s hand finds Connor’s, holds onto it like Connor might get sucked out of the car any second now.

When the car comes to a stop in front of the house, he feels his heart sinking in his chest, the urge to say _don’t go_ so strong he has to bite his tongue to keep from voicing them. He has no right to tell Connor to stay. He can’t even ask him to, not when he has to leave, to do something that Connor can’t be witness too.

The house is large, an almost mansion among all the others. Gavin holds onto Connor’s hand, doesn’t let go as the two sit in the quiet for a moment. Overly stretched out before Connor leans over to him, kisses his cheek and promises he’ll be back in a few minutes.

A few minutes so they can say their proper goodbyes. So Connor can find out whether or not his friend is safe, so he can either be destroyed even more than he already is now, or have a few hours of peace before he discovers what Gavin is about to do.

He nods and lets Connor leave, watches him like he had yesterday—

Walking up the steps to the house, pressing the doorbell and looking back, a silent smile sent to Gavin from afar before the door opens and he turns back, ready to speak, ready to repeat words, ready to ask his questions and Gavin waits, waits, waits.

Waits to leave Connor behind again in whatever mess he is walking into.

Life is so fucking unfair.


	14. Self-Immolation

**9:27 A.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Four**

Nines looks different than he remembers.

He was always the odd one out. Just barely looking a little bit different. Different parts of his face a little bit sharper, a little bit narrower, a little bit harsher. He was never the cold one. He was never the mean one. But everyone thought so. Gray-blue eyes, evil and mean. That was never how he was. Not when they were growing up. Not to his friends. Not t0 strangers. He was quiet and kind in a silent way.

But standing opposite of him now—

It seems strange. So many years slipped between their fingertips and now here they are, a decade later. Not like looking in a mirror like he thought. Not being taken back in time. Just a reminder that of all the people that left Connor, Nines was never one of them. Connor was the one to run away. Connor was the one to abandon that time.

“Hi,” he says, trying for the same smile he did when he talked to North. Trying to make this a softened blow. Not harsh and desperate. Put off the words long enough and he won’t crack, he won’t start crying. Not yet. “How… how are you?”

Nines tilts his head, shrugs his shoulders just a little bit. _So-so._ Right. Still no words. Still no talking. Or at least, as little as he can manage, as little as needed.

He follows his gaze towards the car, looking back to Gavin again. There was a moment when he stepped out of the car that he feared it would drive away. Leave him in the dust now that he’s at his last destination, his final hope. No obligation to keep helping him.

“That’s Gavin,” he says, putting his hands in his pocket, trying to keep the smile off his face. “He’s… a friend.”

Nines raises an eyebrow. _Are you sure?_

“Yeah—Umm… more than a friend. We’ll see.” _We’ll see_ because he will always harbor the fear of abandonment, even if he’s not any better than Markus or Hank or Chloe. Leaving at the sign of trouble. Leave before someone can leave him, maybe.

He sighs and bites his lip, trying to figure out how to phrase the next part of this, the best way to go into the words. Better than he did with North. Something softer. Less blunt. Less _Chloe is missing and she might be dead and you have to help me._

“You’re here for Chloe, aren’t you?”

He holds his breath, waits for the words to process, waits for Nines to continue on. Say something about her dead body. How she was found. That he has information and that Chloe isn’t in the house behind him. In the last twelve hours, all he thought was—

_She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead._

“She’s here?” he whispers, unable to voice the words properly. “Chloe is _here?”_

“Your old room.”

“Can I—?”

Nines nods and he looks back once more to Gavin, not sure if he should run to him, say something instead of disappearing into the house but _Chloe is here, Chloe is alive—_

He steps past Nines into the home. The only house their mother ever bought. Passed down through generations. Old and a little bit rickety. Too big for two kids and a single mother. Before they started moving around, the would race each other up and down the stairs, sometimes press their ears against the walls and tell each other they heard their brother’s ghost wandering around inside. Little lost boy, just trying to find his way home, body frozen cold and drowned in the river, stuffed inside of a box, shoved away underground.

His hand follows the bannister, all replaced now. Not the same old wood with the scratch marks on it. Sleek and shiny, no splinters in his fingers as he makes his way upstairs. He moves in strange staggers of quick and fast paced, fueled by the need to see Chloe again but battling the slow nostalgic look around the house.

They lived here during the summers of their college years. Their friends filled the empty rooms, their voices filled the hallways. Their mother happy that they found another family, another group of people to make the place not seem so empty, so haunted.

He passes pictures hung in hallways from their school photographs. Showing them as they aged up, as more differences started clarifying themselves in their features other than their eyes. The empty spots where their mother died, where she couldn’t continue tracking their life.

He stops outside of his old bedroom door, his hand shaking as he reaches for the knob, a sudden terror flooding through him that this is all just a joke, that Chloe won’t be on the other side, that something will have happened to her.

Maybe she is dead after all.

Who is he to know?

Connor reaches forward, knocks twice before opening the door and stepping inside.

And it feels a little bit like a miracle—

Seeing her, sitting there on the edge of his bed.

“Connor?”

“Chloe,” he whispers back. “You’re alive.”

“Y-Yes. What—What are you doing here?”

He lets out a small laugh, “I thought you were dead.”

“Oh—”

“What happened to you?”

She smiles, soft and sad, “Too much to tell.”

 

 

**9:43 A.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Four**

Connor comes back before Gavin really expects him too, sitting down in the car again, exhaling slowly.

“She’s here.”

“She’s here?”

“Yes,” he says, smiling, and it almost looks real. A trace of worry gone from him. Replaced with something else. Something just as vicious. “I’m… going to stay here. For a few days. Talk to her. Visit my brother. Spend some time with them.”

“Okay.”

“And you?” Connor asks, looking back to him. “You’ll come back when you’re done in Detroit?”

His one saving grace in all of this is that he hasn’t officially lied, but Connor keeps posing him questions that are impossible to find his way out of. No loopholes he can slip through. Carefully wording something, changing the topic—it’s all he has.

“I’ll try,” he says, but he knows even that is a lie technically. He’s not going to try. He’s going to let them arrest him. Maybe before, when he didn’t have Connor in his life, he would’ve tried to run away. Live off the grid. But he can’t do that to Connor. Not when he has a future, not when he has a life still. He can’t wreck it based on twenty-something days.

“Don’t try,” Connor says, taking his hand. “Just… come back, okay? Please?”

He leans across the seat, kisses Connor lightly before taking his hand back, “I’ll get your bag for you.”

“Gavin—”

He steps out of the car, moving to the trunk. He doesn’t even have it open before he hears Connor calling his name, a hand touching his waist and turning him around. Gavin only kisses him to stop him from talking, to stop from hearing the words _please come back_ again. He can’t. He knows this already. He can’t come back for Connor. He’s a terrible person for making him think that he could until now, but he just—

He can’t lie and he can’t come back.

Connor pulls them apart and his hands tighten onto the fabric of his coat, like it’s the only thing keeping him standing. He never expected this to be the hard part. He thought when he let a stranger into his car that they would leave before they got more than a few hours down the road. He thought nothing would happen. He thought he wouldn’t care.

“I don’t need you to come back to me,” Connor whispers, and Gavin knows it’s a lie. The way his voice wavers, the way he sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. He’s lying. “It doesn’t have to be me.”

“Con—”

“But I need you alive,” he continues. “I need you to be alive.”

“Okay,” he says, because he realizes—

He realizes he can’t even promise this part.

The part where he’s alive.

“Gavin, I l—”

“I’ll miss you,” he says, cutting him off, pressing a kiss against his lips. “And if I can come back, I will. I want to be with you.”

_False hope._

Guilt.

It’s all the two of them will ever have, isn’t it?

“Come back, Gavin.”

The _please_ that follows it is quieted when he kisses him again. Draws it out as long as he can. He feels Connor’s tears against his cheeks—or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe Gavin is the one that’s crying. Maybe they both are. He doesn’t know.

He just knows that he will kiss Connor as long as he’ll let Gavin do it. Stave off the leaving for a little bit longer. Have him for just a little bit longer.

_I love you_ he wants to say. _I love you._

It is killing him. _This_ is killing him. _Connor_ is killing him. He has felt so much pain in his entire lifetime and this is only adding onto it. He wonders if he’ll ever have even a single day where he doesn’t remember something terrible or feel terrible or do something terrible.

When they break apart, Gavin knows that he was the one crying. He see’s tears in Connor’s eyes, but they haven’t quite spilled over like his have. He grabs the bag from the trunk, holds it out to him.

“Goodbye, Connor.”

He nods, slowly.

“Goodbye, Gavin.”

_I’ll miss you._

 

**11:08 A.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Four**

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Chloe shakes her head, “I just need you to know that I’m okay.”

He doesn’t believe her. Not really. There is a bandage poking up around the sleeve of her shirt. She looks like she’s been crying. She hasn’t called North in months. She hasn’t called _him_ in months.

He doesn’t believe her.

And he didn’t believe Gavin, either.

But he nods, because he doesn’t want to push her.

“Why didn’t you just… text me?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I don’t—I don’t know how to… _explain_ anything to you. It doesn’t make sense, I know. I’m sorry, Connor. I’m sorry I left you.”

He reaches out and takes her hand, the one without a bandaged wrapped around her wrist. He wants to hold onto her forever. He is tired of people slipping away from him.

“You didn’t tell North you were coming here.”

“I couldn’t.”

“But you came to Nines?”

She laughs, and it is so weak and small she almost sounds like a sick child, “I knew he wouldn’t tell anyone.”

_Nines._ Secret keeper.

Of course.

“Will you come back? With me?”

“I want to.”

He is tired of hearing that. Tired of hearing people’s _wants_. He needs to hear what they will _do._ They think he doesn’t notice their word choices, they think he doesn’t see how much it pains them to lie to him. He does. He notices. He sees.

“I’m going to visit North,” she says. “For a little bit, I think. Spend some time with her. A few weeks, maybe. Then… come back.”

He doesn’t know if he believes her, to be honest, but he nods. _Fine. Yes. Of course._

“A few weeks,” he repeats back. And then he sighs, heavy and uncertain, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes to keep from crying. Always on the verge of tears lately. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah? And you?”

“Me?”

“I saw him,” she says, reverting back so quickly to that girl she was before Hank’s suicide. Holding his hand tightly in hers, smiling. A little frail, not quite what she once was. “Who is he?”

“Gavin?” he laughs, and it comes out real before falling away in pieces. “I love him.”

“You found a boyfriend while I was gone?”

He shrugs, “I don’t know if he’s my boyfriend. We didn’t… label things.”

“No? Tell me about him.”

So he does.

As much as he can.

As much as she’ll let him.

 

**11:44 A.M. | Sunoco / Day Twenty-Four**

The drive to Detroit is painful. Slow and empty and quiet. No matter what music he puts on, it feels wrong. Connor isn’t next to him, singing semi-poorly to the songs, always getting the lyrics wrong like he’s trying to make Gavin correct him, to get a reaction from him. There are no games they’re playing, no questions being asked for something as arbitrary as a star or the sun. There’s no laugh, there’s no smile, there’s not a hand holding his.

When he stops at a gas station, he feels so lonely that when the wind picks up around him, for a moment he thinks it’s Connor standing behind him, arms wrapping around his waist like he did once, a kiss pressed to the top of his head.

He looks like an absolute fool, crying in the middle of the gas station, but he can’t help it. Connor cracked him open just when he was finally finished sealing his walls off for good. Now everything is leaking out, spilling in. Nothing is contained anymore. He was airtight. He was ready to suffocate.

He doesn’t hate Connor. He just hates himself. He had something good. He had something incredible.

And he left it.

For what?

A jail cell?

Peace?

Why is he _still here?_

 

**12:56 P.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Four**

“Are you going somewhere?”

His voice makes Connor jump, a hand flying to his chest as if it can slow it down.

“Christ, Nines,” he whispers. “You’re like a mouse.”

“Better than a rat.”

He’ll give him that.

“I’m going to the cemetery,” he says, looking back to the floor again, sliding his shoes on. “I wanted to visit them while I’m here. It’s been too long. Do you want to come with?”

“Yes.” Nines says, with a small nod. He grabs the keys hanging from one of the hooks, holds them out to Connor. _Still doesn’t drive._

Still hates cars that much.

He takes them, “Okay. I’ll wait for you.”

 

**1:21 P.M. | Detroit / Day Twenty-Four**

Detroit is only two hours away. He could have spent all day with Connor. He could have spent it wandering through his old house, kissing him so more, making memories that would last him. And instead he left. Instead, he’s here.

_Detroit._

Fucking shitty place.

He hates it. He never wants to come back. He wants to break something the second he enters the city limits. _Fucking Detroit._

**1:24 P.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Four**

He never saw his mother’s grave before. He was there at her funeral, was there with his brother when they picked out the stone, but he never saw it. He refused to step foot into the cemetery after his brother died, and he did the same when his mother died, too. _Amanda Stern_ engraved neatly on stone, right beside his father’s, right beside his brother’s. There’s empty space for him and Nines.

It feels strange being here. Wrong, almost.

“Do you want to be alone?”

They drove here in silence. Not a strange occurrence between the two. Even after a decade apart, the silence between them is still comforting. Nines not having to worry about what people will think when he can’t form words. Connor not having to worry about crafting sentences that won’t make someone run in another direction.

He looks over to Nines now, away from the stones to his brother.

“No,” he says, reaching out for his hand. “I don’t. Will you stay?”

“Yes,” he says, taking the hand. “Of course.”

 

**2:24 P.M. | Detroit / Day Twenty-Four**

He never saw his sister’s grave before. He was there at her funeral, eavesdropped on his mother and father’s fights over which stone to pick for her, but he never saw it. He refused to step foot into the cemetery after she died, and then he ran away before he could come back and change his mind.

There are flowers sitting in front of it. Tulips. Yellow and white.

It feels strange being here. Wrong, almost.

His mother and his sister’s gravestones side by side. A punch in the gut that he thought he had already long dealt with.

Gavin falls to his knees, feels the cold air engulfing him as he tries to breathe in, finding he can’t get enough air to exhale.

They’re gone. _They’re gone._

_She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead._

He is going to kill him.

 

**4:35 P.M. | Detroit / Day Twenty-Four**

“Hey, Tina.”

“Hey, Gavvy. I’m headed back to work, so I won’t be able to talk long,” Tina says with a sigh, a slam of the door into quiet. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to say hi. How are things?”

“Good. How are things with you?”

“I lost my phone charger,” he lies. “And my phone is dying. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a replacement anytime soon. So…”

“So you’re warning me that you’re going to disappear again?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Okay. Um… thanks. And I mean that. I said it more sarcastic than I meant, but I do mean it. Thank you.”

He smiles, “Listen, I don’t know when I’ll get back… Is Latte alright?”

“She’s a very happy, very well-fed cat.”

“And you?”

“I said I was good already.”

“Any new hot dates?”

“No. You?”

He laughs and thinks of Connor. That if he wasn’t sitting outside of his old house, watching someone shovel away snow from the driveway, he could maybe tell Tina for real. But he never would have met Connor without coming here, would he have?

“None.”

“Gav?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you… do you need anything?”

He considers lying, just to hear her voice for a little bit longer, just to stretch this conversation on for more time. He doesn’t want to lose her yet. He still has her. He lost Gavin and he lost Latte but right now, he still has Tina. But he can’t keep holding onto her for forever.

A girl and a cat.

Separate from him now.

Not his anymore.

“No,” he decides. “I’m okay, Tina.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he says. “But thank you. For everything.”

_For everything._

“Gav?”

“You’re my best friend,” he says, letting the words come out of his mouth quickly, not letting himself filter them. Trying to be honest for once. To put his feelings out there. It’s the last chance he has at this. “Thank you for taking care of me when I came to Anchorage. You didn’t have to do that. You’re incredible. I don’t know if I would be alive with you. So, thank you.”

“Gavin, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I really am.”

“Gav—”

He hangs up the phone before she can say anything else, presses down on the button until it shuts off so he doesn’t have to see her worried calls ring in. He should’ve waited longer, but he needed to end everything before he can do this, before he can focus on this and only this. He needs to be alone.

Truly, completely alone.

Just like he was twenty years ago.

 

**6:27 P.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Four**

It’s weird cooking at the old house. Chloe and Nines and the smell of food in the air. It’s strange being a part of their little group again and trying not to be overwhelmed by the sadness of Gavin being gone and being in this place again versus dealing with Markus leaving him, dealing with college ending.

He is a whirlwind of emotions. Never being able to settle on one for very long. If he isn’t upset about the loss of Gavin, he’s worried about Chloe, and if he isn’t worried about Chloe, he is overcome with all that he has left behind. The nostalgia of this house, his brother that once spent every day with him, who was once his best friend, of how many friends he used to have, who used to care for him so deeply.

The last time the three of them were together were the days after they graduated from college, the days that him and Chloe looked at places in Alaska to move to and get away from the memories of Michigan.

Connor was the one running. Running from his mother’s death, his brother’s death, Markus leaving him, feeling hopeless and lost with a degree for something he didn’t know if he wanted anymore. And he pulled Chloe along with him. Forced her away from a girl that liked her enough to want to keep her around even after Connor was shoved out of their group.

And the last time they laughed like this, the last time they smiled and it was just the three of them, predated Markus and his friends. Before North started giving Chloe glances across the room, before Markus started flirting with Connor and he returned it eagerly, before their mother died. Before everything.

He almost yearns for that before. The kind of young and carefree attitude he doesn’t have anymore. The kind of passion and drive he lost. Now he is so consumed with the fear of losing someone he gave Gavin permission to never come back to him.

It hurts. He hurts. A bone deep ache he can’t soothe away.

 

**8:59 P.M. | Detroit / Day Twenty-Four**

Connor was right.

He does look like a criminal.

Nobody even questions his presence in the abandoned house. Nobody really gives a second thought when he passes a wad of cash over in exchange for a gun.

It’s like he belongs here. _Street rat._

Connor was right about that, too.

It’s a shame he didn’t guess how terrible they would be together first. It’s a shame he let Gavin kiss him. It’s not Connor’s fault Gavin fell in love with him, but he wishes Connor had seen his face in the car the night and said no to getting in the car.

 

**9:27 P.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Four**

It hasn’t even been a full twelve hours since Gavin left.

But he misses him.

And his chest _hurts._

And his heart _yearns._

And he wants him _back._

**10:52 P.M. | Detroit / Day Twenty-Four**

He waits until it’s dark, until the sun has set and there’s no hope of people coming over, no sign of anyone else inside but his father. He saw the car pull up, saw him exit and stride over to the house as if he wasn’t a monster.

He didn’t see Eli, for which he’s thankful. He thinks if he saw him, he might break. Clean in half. Unable to function properly.

Gavin steps up to the house, finding the key hidden under a rock where it has always been. He still has a copy from when he ran away. It wouldn’t fit in the lock anymore. The entire house has been destroyed twice. Nothing remains of the original place except the people.

He wonders if even that is the same—how different they all are now because of two fires.

The key slides into the lock easily and he steps inside, taken aback with how familiar it looks. Everything almost the exact same. He even feels the urge to run, the urge to hide in one of the many places he found during his childhood. Under the stairs. In the closet. Up to the attic. Down in the basement.

He most often hid in the kitchen, where the cooks never left and his father never entered. A safety zone where his abuse couldn’t reach. He couldn’t let strangers hear or see any of it. Gavin brought his sister there, his brother there, trying to keep them safe. The more of them that hid in the cupboards or behind the counters, the more often their mother was sent in to retrieve them.

It was best to hide by themselves. Then their mother wasn’t involved. Not as often.

None of them were free from any kind of abuse. Their father split it up like he was trying to ration it out. Eli was tormented with mental and emotional, cracking every piece of himself that was left, forcing him to assimilate into the golden boy role he never wanted. Gavin was hit, kicked shoved. Never wanted. A bastard child. _Wrong mother._ Too young to be able to keep him, ripped from her arms even though she fought her hardest.

And his sister—

Late nights and screams.

Gavin is in the dark now. This place is not the same place he used to live in. His father hasn’t changed, but he doesn’t know what happened to Eli in the last twenty years. What he might have faced. What he might have been forced to deal with when the other targets were gone. Does his body show bruises like theirs did? Or was it all kept for their mother?

He hates this place.

He feels sick to his stomach as he wanders the corridors, adjusting the bag on his shoulder, holding the gun tight. He thinks he might accidentally pull the trigger if he saw a shadow move. He’s on edge. Like a horror movie, waiting for the creature to jump from nowhere and leave him terrified.

Except there is no escape here. It will never go away.

_It’s not about finding peace. There will never be peace._ The words from Connor’s book echo through his head and he can feel the tears prick at his eyes, the need and the urge to start screaming and crying.

Gavin pushes the door open to the study, stares in at the dimly lit room. A fake fire blazing in the electric hearth, the smell of cigars strong and the sound of the bottle being set down.

“Who the fuck are you?”

_Who_

          He

_the_

          is a

_fuck_

          child

_are_

          again.

_you?_

            Lost and alone and unwanted. Yelling and yelping and yellowing bruises. Running, being caught, dragged by his shirt, by his ear, by his hair. Thrown to the floor, face slammed against hardwood. _Clean this up._ Glass in his hands sometimes, alcohol shoved down his throat.

“You don’t remember me?” Gavin asks, looking to him. He hates how small his voice sounds, he hates that it sounds as if he cares whether or not his father recognizes him. It’s not like Eddie. There is no slow understanding, even as he lifts up the gun, aims it him. Steadier than he thought with the shaking of his hands. “Pretend there’s not a scar on my face. Maybe you’ll recall me then.”

His father looks back at him, opens his mouth to speak when Gavin realizes he doesn’t want to hear another word of it. He presses down on the trigger, leaves a bullet in his leg. His father screams and he shakes his head, tries to get the sound of it out.

He isn’t allowed to scream.

It isn’t fair.

Not when his were smothered under water, when his sister’s were smothered by a pillow.

_He isn’t allowed to scream._

Gavin steps forward and hits him hard over the side of the head with the gun. Hard enough that he watches his father’s eyes blink and slide closed. It will be brief. He makes do with his time. Setting the gun down and fishing the rope out of the bag. Wondering—

Wondering what Connor is doing right now. What he would think if he could see Gavin, tying legs to a chair, arms behind the back of it, slapping duct-tape over his mouth, checking to see how many bullets he has.

He could leave them all in places that would make the pain last. Torture him as much as possible. Gavin thinks about this as he waits, sitting on the edge of the couch, watching his eyes flutter open again. Maybe he should have had a speech prepared. List all of the terrible things that happened to him while he was away. How he thought he was escaping abuse only to enter more.

But his father would enjoy that, wouldn’t he? Just like all the others that took his pain and used it for sexual gratitude. He’d get off on it.

“You deserve so much worse than this,” he whispers. “Everything you did to us—”

He cuts himself off, reaches for the gun only to stop—

Grab the bottle of whiskey, turn it over in his hands.

“You deserve to burn.”

He wants to hit him again. He wants to make him bleed until there’s not a drop left in his body. He wants to make him suffer.

He opts for this instead:

Uncapping the bottle, turning it over and letting the liquid soak through his expensive suit. He should’ve brought gasoline. He should’ve thought about this before. The only punishment fit for his father, the only death he deserves, is to burn to death just like his mother, just like he almost did twenty fucking years ago.

When the bottle is empty, he hits it hard over the side of his head and leaves glass pieces on the ground. It’s not enough. It’s not enough to make up for all the anger he felt as a kid. It’s never going to be enough.

“Gavin?”

The neck of the bottle slips from his hand, clatters against the floor with the rest of it as he turns to face the doorway.

Elijah looks so different now. He’d seen the pictures on the news, followed the story as the charges against his father were dropped, as the investigators looked for someone other than a member of the Kamski family—likely paid off to throw suspicion elsewhere. Maybe in a few months they’d find someone to take the bait. A rival corporation. Something to do with his precious business. He has enough money to frame someone, he has enough pull to find blackmail to force them to confess.

But Elijah looks different in person than he does in the photographs. Older. More lost. Worn down like he’s fifty instead of thirty-six.

Is that how Gavin looks?

Exhausted? Old? Ready to just lay down and sleep and never wake again?

“Eli,” he replies, because it’s all he can manage. Not even the full name. Not even _Elijah._

“What—You’re—You’re alive?”

He laughs. _Just barely._ Just barely alive.

Gavin doesn’t get the chance to answer him. He watches his brother’s eyes move to the table where the gun lies and he reaches forward quickly, picking it up and holding it at his side.

He won’t kill his brother, but he’ll threaten him if he has to.

“I’m not here for you, Eli,” he says. “Go.”

“What are you planning on doing?”

Gavin turns the gun to his father’s head, “I’m going to fucking kill him for what he did. To our sister. To mom. To you. To me. All of it.”

“Gavin—”

“He killed her,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know if he’s talking about his mother or his sister or both. He killed both of them. “He ruined her and he killed her.”

“Give me the gun, Gavin.”

“No,” he says. “You’re not going to stop me from doing this.”

“I know,” Elijah says, taking a step forward. “I’ll do it.”

“I don’t trust you,” Gavin replies, and he knows it is the absolute truth.

Eli has always lain on a strange barrier between being one of them and not. The precious son built to take over an empire. Not at all like him and his sister, who were destroyed until they could be buried beneath the dirt and forgotten. If he didn’t run away, if his sister didn’t kill herself, they would’ve been abandoned some other way.

“Gavin,” he takes another step towards him, his hand outstretched. “Everything he did to you and everything he did to her, he did to me, too. Give me the gun. Please.”

He can see it.

In the way his gaze avoids their fathers. He can see it in the way that Eli looks so tired, so ready to fall apart.

Gavin sets the gun down in his palm, lets him take it. He feels it’s a mistake, even as he fishes the lighter out of his pocket, as he presses it down into Eli’s other hand.

“You should go,” he whispers. “Before anyone else comes here. You were safe before. You can be safe again.”

He doesn’t want to. _He wants to._

He wants to run away back to Connor where he was happy, where he felt loved, where he felt like there was a world of possibilities open for him to explore. He wants to stay here, he wants to make sure his father is dead before he steps foot out the door.

“Go.”

A quiet urge, an echo from their childhood. Gavin whispering for Eli to run, to leave, to be somewhere safe. Somewhere else.

He showed Eli all of his best hiding spots before their sister became part of the equation. Nine years it was the two of them. She only had six before she was destroyed.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says quietly. “I’m sorry I left you.”

Eli nods, remains quiet even as their father tries to scream against the duct-tape keeping his mouth shut.

“I love you, Gavin. I hope you know that. I’m glad you’re alive.”

He smiles, weak and uncertain.

“I love you, too, Eli.”

He pushes the door open, closes it behind him.

And waits.

Waits until he hears his father start to scream.

Waits until he hears a gunshot fire,

Hesitates as the screams continue on.

 

**1:03 A.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Five**

He can’t sleep. He’s exhausted but every time his eyes slide closed they open again, thinking of things he shouldn’t torture himself with.

Connor creeps out of the room, floorboards creaking under his feet as he makes his way through the house. Past his old room where Chloe sleeps—he couldn’t ask her to move, she was here first, wasn’t she? Past Nines old room, which is now empty besides for a bed made up for guests he’ll rarely ever have. Down the steps, around the corner, into the sparsely decorated living room. Empty like Nines has just moved in. Memories pushed away and erased.

He doesn’t blame him.

Every single surface is coated with something from their past. Why have the couch and the tables and the shelves that they stained and dented and marked with their lives when the floorboard has a chart of their history within their scrapes and scratches?

Connor curls up onto the window seat, pulling a blanket around him. He glances out at the street below, the snow, the quiet. Up to the sky where he sees the faint stars, the crescent moon.

Gavin won’t come back. He can feel it. He knows it. He won’t be proved wrong. Not this time.

 

**2:14 A.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Five**

He wakes to the sound a car door closing, breaking him away from the kind of half-sleep where he can’t even tell if he even fell asleep at all. Connor looks out to the car parked on the side of the road, of Gavin stepping up to the house, hands in his pockets. He seems to be looking up to the windows, looking for something, somebody.

Connor stands, abandoning the blanket on the floor, slipping across the ground in his race to the outdoors. The snow wets his socks, makes his toes feel frozen and cold as he crashes into Gavin, holding onto him tight.

He didn’t cry until after Gavin left before, but he’s sobbing now, the kind of loud wails that he fears will wake someone up.

“You’re alive,” he whispers. “I thought—I thought you were going to kill yourself.”

Gavin’s arms come up around him slowly, holding onto him tight. There isn’t a response. He doesn’t get a response at all. Gavin is quiet in his arms, a slow breakage as Connor brings him back to the house, pulls him up the stairs and into his bed.

Gavin is quiet, but he cries while Connor helps pull his jacket off, helps him undress to lay beside him. A mirror image of the night Gavin found him. He even feels cold. Frozen to the bone like he spent too much time sitting outside.

Maybe he did.

Connor doesn’t know what happened.

He didn’t really think Gavin would even come back. He thought he lost him forever.

“Gavin,” he whispers, pressing a kiss against his forehead, his temple, his cheek, his nose and his jaw. A careful map of his face. “I love you.”

Gavin kisses him back. Different from before. It doesn’t feel like a subtle push away.

It doesn’t feel like a goodbye.

When he pulls away, he returns the kiss against Connor’s cheek.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin murmurs. “I love you, too.”

It’s the last words, the only words, they speak for the rest of the night. Gavin cries and Connor holds onto him tight, not daring to let him go again. He has him back. He doesn’t need to know where he was today, he just needs Gavin here and alive.

 

**7:58 A.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Five**

There’s a moment when he wakes up where nothing exists. His sister and his mother aren’t dead. He isn’t Gavin Reed. His father isn’t a person in his life. There is a tiny fraction of a moment where he is simply embraced by warm arms and the fleeting feeling of weightlessness where nothing exists.

It feels nice.

It feels impossible.

It crushes him down and he leans further into Connor, breathing in his scent, placing a kiss against his neck. It would be so nice now to drown everything out in absolutely nothing. It would be perfect to just go back to that moment.

But life never really works that way.

Trauma always has a way of resurfacing, no matter how hard he tries to bury it back down.

 

**9:09 A.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Twenty-Five**

He flips through the news channel, looking and waiting for the story to appear. The confirmation. He needs to know his father is dead. There is the slimmest bit of hope in his chest beating its wings telling him that Eli is alive.

But when he stumbles on the story, the remote slips from his hand and he covers his mouth, trying to not scream, biting down on his palm as tears spill down his face.

“Gavin?”

He’s on the floor, clutching his stomach like he’s been kicked. If hope was a butterfly, if it was struggling to beat behind his ribs before, now it’s been killed. Wings torn off, turned into nothing.

His brother is dead.

He thought—

He thought but he didn’t know.

He hoped.

He hoped and he hoped and he hoped—

“I’m so sorry,” Connor whispers. “Gavin…”

He turns into Connor’s arms, presses himself as small as he will go. Caged and safe, hoping beyond everything else that he can survive this.

He’s the last Kamski.

He never thought that’s how his life would go.

He never thought _he_ would be the survivor.

 

**4:04 P.M. | Detroit / Day Twenty-Nine**

He watches from afar. He can’t be close enough that the reporters and the people will recognize him or take his picture. He stays in the car with Connor, their fingers threaded together tight. He watches as they lower the casket, blocked mostly by the people shrouded in black. He wonders if any of them really knew Eli, or if they’re just here because he was well-known, rich, cameras taking pictures of their sad faces and printing them under the headline of _MURDER-SUICIDE._

He wonders if a single one of them cared about Eli at all.

Sometimes, he wonders if he even did.

He left him behind in that house of horrors.

Is he any better?

 

**9:36 A.M. | Kalamazoo / Day Thirty-Seven**

They put it off for as long as they can. Neither of the two really wanting to return to Alaska so soon. It’s nice having each other here in Michigan. Sharing a bed and being able to wake up together. The moment they start back, they will be in hotel rooms again and spending hours in a car only to separate from one another when they reach Anchorage.

Connor has his number. He has kissed him a thousand times, held his hand almost nonstop. The space will do them good. The distance will help them not rely on one another so much.

But it is still distance and the thought of it hurts. They only live a few hours apart. They can visit on their days off. They can spend more time together. They can text and call and still be together.

Maybe in a year, Gavin will ask Connor to move in with him. Maybe a year after that, they’ll get married. Maybe there is more than this ache inside of his chest.

They pack their bags. Connor says goodbye to Nines, hugging him tight and afraid to let go again. He’s not going to spend ten years not talking to his brother—not again. Chloe promises him she’ll come back to Seward after visiting North, that this isn’t the end. That none of this is an end.

 “Ready?” Gavin asks.

_No._

“Yeah,” he replies, taking Gavin’s hand. “Let’s go.”

Back to Alaska.

_Home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for reading along in this journey of horrors

**Author's Note:**

> [hmu on my tumblr where all i do is talk abt convin](https://norchloe.tumblr.com/)  
> also thank you to the lovely [same-side](https://same-side.tumblr.com/) for letting me ramble at her abt this au. ♥


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